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Not sure about Mountain View but in SF its > 60% https://sf.curbed.com/2018/7/12/17565192/housing-needs-trends-report-rent-control-san-francisco https://sf.cur

Not sure about Mountain View but in SF its > 60% https://sf.curbed.com/2018/7/12/17565192/housing-needs-trends-report-rent-control-san-francisco https://sf.curbed.com/2018/7/12/17565192/housing-needs-trend... It's a disastrous policy, and one of the main reasons SF housing is such a mess. Tenant laws also tend to incentivize booting everyone at once and converting to condos instead of renting units.

femiagbabiaka 7y ago
>disastrous policy it's literally the only reason most of the remaining long time citizens who aren't wealthy can live there still
- refurb 7y ago
  It’s also the reason why rents are so high. And the crazy thing is it applies to everyone regardless of need. I know a few people clearing almost $1M per year and they love their rent controlled unit that has a rent 30% of market rate.
  - Jotra7 7y ago
    Those are gross, immoral people.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- ninth_ant 7y ago
  Rent control rewards the entrenched people who were lucky enough to find a unit early, at the expense of everyone who came later. The beneficiaries of this may not consider it that way, but it most certainly is a form of wealth for them. So I would argue that even they too, are wealthy. The victims of rent control are everyone who is pushed out of the city -- or those who cannot move there -- because of how rent control makes building rental units unprofitable.
  - vkou 7y ago
    > Rent control rewards the entrenched people who were lucky enough to find a unit early, at the expense of everyone who came later. And market housing rewards well-paid, rich professionals at the expense of everyone who isn't pulling in a FAANG salary. Neither is a 'fair' distribution of shelter - that much is true. > The victims of rent control are everyone who is pushed out of the city -- or those who cannot move there -- because of how rent control makes building rental units unprofitable. If you remove rent control tomorrow, there's going to be no shortage of immediate, acutely suffering victims of that political decision. Forgive me that I have more sympathy for those individuals, then some nebulous group of 'People who, for whatever reason, really want to move to SF, and can afford a $2,800 apartment, but not a $3,400 one, so they don't move to SF.'
    - cycrutchfield 7y ago
      News flash, in a capitalist society, scarce resources are more readily available to those with money than those without. Regarding “fair distribution of shelter”, what do you consider fair? How do you allocate scarce resources in a fair manner? You make it sound like having an apartment in downtown SF is some sort of inalienable right.
      - xnyan 7y ago
        News flash its no longer 1972 and criticism of capitalism is now allowed.
        cycrutchfield 7y ago
        Great, let's hear that criticism and constructive alternative solutions to the vexing problem of fair allocation of scarce resources?
    - flukus 7y ago
      > If you remove rent control tomorrow, there's going to be no shortage of immediate, acutely suffering victims of that political decision. I have no dog in this race but I'm curious how this would play out long term. The people that are made homeless and have to move are all working in jobs necessary to a functioning society, cutting hair, stacking shelves, cleaning toilets, etc. How do these functions get replaced? Would higher salaries be offered? If so the relative pay of tech workers would go down and it could create a real inflationary feedback cycle, surely tech workers would probably price themselves out of the market at some point. Would people commute from further away instead? Surely the number of people willing to commute 2 hours each way for low pay would be limited. This would also cause a whole heap of traffic issues. Would these sorts of jobs simply move out of the city? It's hard to imagine but what if a grocery store simply couldn't afford people to stack shelves and they all closed down? Does everyone order from Amazon? In most cases it seems having a viable working class in the area is what allows tech workers to be rich.
- robbiemitchell 7y ago
  The way to live somewhere a long time is to own the property. On paper, rent control is a failed solution to high prices resulting from under supply in the market. Build more housing.
- Hermitian909 7y ago
  Among other problems rent control has this really nasty side effect of stopping that community action that would help control housing prices, Seattle is a good illustration of this. When rent started increasing in Seattle all renters were immediately effected and so that segment of the population mobilized and applied pressure to do the one thing that keeps housing prices down in a free market: Increase supply. Lots of people were forced out but after over a decade of non-stop, fevered construction prices are finally starting to get under control. In San Francisco a large portion of the rental market is insulated from rent prices until it's time to move. At that point if you're priced out, you tend to leave. Some people try to tough it out and fight but that rarely lasts more than a year or two. This staggering of resistance to increased rents into smaller chunks of the renting population makes political change almost impossible as no small chunk has a chance against the more consistently committed land owners.
  - coliveira 7y ago
    That's incorrect: Seattle is building new apartments but only those who make large salaries can rent them. The population that used to pay reasonable prices for rentals now cannot afford the prices and are either leaving the city or in extreme cases living in the streets. In this respect Seattle is now closer to San Francisco than what you imagine.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      New apartments rent for more than older apartments, forcing them downmarket. So ya, new developments are priced higher, but enough of it has come online in the last year or two that down pressure is being applied to the rental market (though perhaps not enough?). At least rents aren’t rising as fast as they were.
    - Hermitian909 7y ago
      I'm aware that most of the new housing is luxury apartments, but rents are finally dropping. I think the reality of the past 30 years is simply that prices were increasing faster than we could build for a long time and we had to play catch up.
- warp_factor 7y ago
  multiple economic papers have shown that Rent Control is a huge disaster for a city. As said in another comment, it rewards those that moved in early (and those might be super rich techies like most of my friends that like to brag about having a rent controlled 2000$ 2bedroom). Rent control forces new units to be priced super high because the landlords know they will not be able to increase afterward. Probably one of the most failed policy in SF (and there are a lot of failed policies there)
  - wahern 7y ago
    According to the most recent paper, "renters who came later paid about 5% more than they would have in the absence of rent control." https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/rent-controls-winners-losers https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/rent-controls-winners-... That doesn't sound disastrous. After the 2016 election I would think free market proponents would be more appreciative of the value of economic security and the costs of structural dislocation, but I guess not.... Anyhow, rent control in SF only applies to pre-1979 buildings, so if anything rent control provides an incentive to build new housing. We need more new housing, period. We can at least agree on that. I don't see how rent control prevents the creation of new housing. The city and its voters do that all by themselves.
    - SamReidHughes 7y ago
      The study period ends in 2010 and it doesn’t account for the different political situation as a result of rent control.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Its also the reason young low income people cant live there.
- jeffbax 7y ago
  "Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed, either completely or with provisos, that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.”1 Similarly, another study reported that more than 95 percent of the Canadian economists polled agreed with the statement.2 The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum, ranging all the way from Nobel Prize winners milton friedman and friedrich hayek on the “right” to their fellow Nobel laureate gunnar myrdal, an important architect of the Swedish Labor Party’s welfare state, on the “left.” Myrdal stated, “Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.”3 ___His fellow Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”___ https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

femiagbabiaka 7y ago

>disastrous policy it's literally the only reason most of the remaining long time citizens who aren't wealthy can live there still

refurb 7y ago
It’s also the reason why rents are so high. And the crazy thing is it applies to everyone regardless of need. I know a few people clearing almost $1M per year and they love their rent controlled unit that has a rent 30% of market rate.
- Jotra7 7y ago
  Those are gross, immoral people.
dodobirdlord 7y ago
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
ninth_ant 7y ago
Rent control rewards the entrenched people who were lucky enough to find a unit early, at the expense of everyone who came later. The beneficiaries of this may not consider it that way, but it most certainly is a form of wealth for them. So I would argue that even they too, are wealthy. The victims of rent control are everyone who is pushed out of the city -- or those who cannot move there -- because of how rent control makes building rental units unprofitable.
- vkou 7y ago
  > Rent control rewards the entrenched people who were lucky enough to find a unit early, at the expense of everyone who came later. And market housing rewards well-paid, rich professionals at the expense of everyone who isn't pulling in a FAANG salary. Neither is a 'fair' distribution of shelter - that much is true. > The victims of rent control are everyone who is pushed out of the city -- or those who cannot move there -- because of how rent control makes building rental units unprofitable. If you remove rent control tomorrow, there's going to be no shortage of immediate, acutely suffering victims of that political decision. Forgive me that I have more sympathy for those individuals, then some nebulous group of 'People who, for whatever reason, really want to move to SF, and can afford a $2,800 apartment, but not a $3,400 one, so they don't move to SF.'
  - cycrutchfield 7y ago
    News flash, in a capitalist society, scarce resources are more readily available to those with money than those without. Regarding “fair distribution of shelter”, what do you consider fair? How do you allocate scarce resources in a fair manner? You make it sound like having an apartment in downtown SF is some sort of inalienable right.
    - xnyan 7y ago
      News flash its no longer 1972 and criticism of capitalism is now allowed.
      - cycrutchfield 7y ago
        Great, let's hear that criticism and constructive alternative solutions to the vexing problem of fair allocation of scarce resources?
  - flukus 7y ago
    > If you remove rent control tomorrow, there's going to be no shortage of immediate, acutely suffering victims of that political decision. I have no dog in this race but I'm curious how this would play out long term. The people that are made homeless and have to move are all working in jobs necessary to a functioning society, cutting hair, stacking shelves, cleaning toilets, etc. How do these functions get replaced? Would higher salaries be offered? If so the relative pay of tech workers would go down and it could create a real inflationary feedback cycle, surely tech workers would probably price themselves out of the market at some point. Would people commute from further away instead? Surely the number of people willing to commute 2 hours each way for low pay would be limited. This would also cause a whole heap of traffic issues. Would these sorts of jobs simply move out of the city? It's hard to imagine but what if a grocery store simply couldn't afford people to stack shelves and they all closed down? Does everyone order from Amazon? In most cases it seems having a viable working class in the area is what allows tech workers to be rich.
robbiemitchell 7y ago
The way to live somewhere a long time is to own the property. On paper, rent control is a failed solution to high prices resulting from under supply in the market. Build more housing.
Hermitian909 7y ago
Among other problems rent control has this really nasty side effect of stopping that community action that would help control housing prices, Seattle is a good illustration of this. When rent started increasing in Seattle all renters were immediately effected and so that segment of the population mobilized and applied pressure to do the one thing that keeps housing prices down in a free market: Increase supply. Lots of people were forced out but after over a decade of non-stop, fevered construction prices are finally starting to get under control. In San Francisco a large portion of the rental market is insulated from rent prices until it's time to move. At that point if you're priced out, you tend to leave. Some people try to tough it out and fight but that rarely lasts more than a year or two. This staggering of resistance to increased rents into smaller chunks of the renting population makes political change almost impossible as no small chunk has a chance against the more consistently committed land owners.
- coliveira 7y ago
  That's incorrect: Seattle is building new apartments but only those who make large salaries can rent them. The population that used to pay reasonable prices for rentals now cannot afford the prices and are either leaving the city or in extreme cases living in the streets. In this respect Seattle is now closer to San Francisco than what you imagine.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    New apartments rent for more than older apartments, forcing them downmarket. So ya, new developments are priced higher, but enough of it has come online in the last year or two that down pressure is being applied to the rental market (though perhaps not enough?). At least rents aren’t rising as fast as they were.
  - Hermitian909 7y ago
    I'm aware that most of the new housing is luxury apartments, but rents are finally dropping. I think the reality of the past 30 years is simply that prices were increasing faster than we could build for a long time and we had to play catch up.
warp_factor 7y ago
multiple economic papers have shown that Rent Control is a huge disaster for a city. As said in another comment, it rewards those that moved in early (and those might be super rich techies like most of my friends that like to brag about having a rent controlled 2000$ 2bedroom). Rent control forces new units to be priced super high because the landlords know they will not be able to increase afterward. Probably one of the most failed policy in SF (and there are a lot of failed policies there)
- wahern 7y ago
  According to the most recent paper, "renters who came later paid about 5% more than they would have in the absence of rent control." https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/rent-controls-winners-losers https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/rent-controls-winners-... That doesn't sound disastrous. After the 2016 election I would think free market proponents would be more appreciative of the value of economic security and the costs of structural dislocation, but I guess not.... Anyhow, rent control in SF only applies to pre-1979 buildings, so if anything rent control provides an incentive to build new housing. We need more new housing, period. We can at least agree on that. I don't see how rent control prevents the creation of new housing. The city and its voters do that all by themselves.
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    The study period ends in 2010 and it doesn’t account for the different political situation as a result of rent control.
tathougies 7y ago
Its also the reason young low income people cant live there.
jeffbax 7y ago
"Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed, either completely or with provisos, that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.”1 Similarly, another study reported that more than 95 percent of the Canadian economists polled agreed with the statement.2 The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum, ranging all the way from Nobel Prize winners milton friedman and friedrich hayek on the “right” to their fellow Nobel laureate gunnar myrdal, an important architect of the Swedish Labor Party’s welfare state, on the “left.” Myrdal stated, “Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.”3 ___His fellow Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”___ https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html