More rent control BS

Once all houses are under rent control, Ellis will be useless. If you Ellis the tenant, you need to keep it vacant or sell it. I think housing price will become pretty low since people won’t bother buying the house when they are guaranteed low rent forever.

Basically real estate investment will become something like a fixed income. Primary home will be just like a car, you buy it for consumption. Its investment value will be minimized.

If this has any chance of passing, I will sell California and buy Texas or Seattle. Califnornia economy may stagnate and decline since new immigrants and new migrants flow will be stopped.

Restriction 1 will cause problem 2 and restriction 2; restriction 2 will cause new problem 3 and restriction 3. This cycle will continue and continue and you’ll arrive at comminism pretty quickly

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This is such a nice place/area/state to live in though that I am not sure that even if your Doomsday scenario plays out, that people wouldn’t still want to come here.

Properties in Bay Area will always beat Texas, even if they tightened up rent control here. Our golden geese keep laying golden eggs and more importantly, some of these eggs actually hatch and we have more golden geese… Our golden geese fleet is getting bigger…

Silicon Valley is still where innovation happens. We change the world on a daily basis. If SV goes down the whole USA will go down. Then it will be time to pack up your bag and move to China.

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There would be no vacancy even if there are millions wanting to come. Are they willing to live on the street in SF?

Hard to believe that it will come to that. Law of supply and demand will make things happen. Either more building, more Ellis Acting or some new angle/creation. Let’s be quite honest, rich people who want in, will get their way one way or another.

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Will not happen within my lifetime… :rofl:

Realistically, rich people are not moving to Bay Area in droves. As far as I know, the non rich and young people move here and work hard/smart to become rich.

Zuckerburg was a poor college student when he moved here. If there was no rental vacancy, he could just stay in Boston.

If our rent control leaves cities with no vacancy for young workers, innovation will happen elsewhere.

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Please, I am free for about 3 days from now. I am still waiting for you to pack up and leave for…where? Oh…Texas! Where you are forced to bend over and kiss Israel’s butt. Gee…what the shell is Israel doing in our internal affairs? Oh, it’s not them, it’s our beautiful politicians, which you guys, well, some of you hate…if they are democrats.

Hypocrisy at the best level. Come on, confess, I know you, yes, you! :smiley:

It would be nice of you to leave, some other of your partners here will be happy to take over your properties. Ohhhhh…believe me! They are salivating waiting for you to OK it. :rofl:

Just be careful when you go out the door, don’t let it slam your behind. :sweat_smile:

We are planning on leaving, we are, don’t know when, and to where, but we are, and that door ain’t slamming our behind. Ask sheriff, he took his time and he didn’t announce it here as if something tragic was coming. He ain’t a cry baby…:star_struck:

You guys are so unhappy! Come on, have fun!

Let’s be honest, people have been calling for the demise of the Fab 7x7 and the Bay Area forever, yet, we are still at the top of the heap. Do I think other areas have capitalized to a certain degree because of how expensive it is here? Of course (hello Seattle and Austin). But, when you have some of the best and brightest all residing here, I really do believe new ideas/products will keep this area relevant. At the end of the day, the entrepreneurs want and need to be where the action is in order to thrive.

I think the BA’s biggest advantage is the existing Asian population and infrastructure. The BA area has enough critical mass that it’s appealing to wealthy Asians moving to the US. There are places you can speak your native language. There are grocery stores that have their favorite foods. Most Asian people won’t want to move to a US city that lacks that stuff. The BA area certainly isn’t popular because Americans are moving to it. Americans are net leaving the bay area and being replaced by people born outside the US.

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Ohhh…Asians don’t want to move to republican areas…got it!

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Let’s not get to upset about this. First it has to get on the ballot. Then it has to pass. If it passes it only repeals the law that says you can’t institute rent control for buildings built after 1995. Your local municipality would still have to pass a law approving it.

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I want to preface this by saying wifey and i will be going to the hearing session on this to give grief to Richard Bloom, David Chiu, et al. And if it passes we will ensure their opponents will be getting donations from us and try to get them voted out of office.

That said, I probably won’t be heart broken if this act gets passed and Costa-Hawkins gets repealed so that we can have a proper pro-con conversation on rent control. but since have a polarized political system and lack of critical thinking in the voting populace I doubt we will get there, hence why we will fight this.

Now here’s my calculus on why this may not be a bad thing per-se

  • the market is distorted today with newer properties safe from rent control and older properties not. They should all be on the same level playing field or we are effectively picking winners and losers. And as someone that owns older properties, I don’t want to be at a disadvantage
  • Costa Hawkins already does not prevent the worse aspects of the what we call rent control (at least imo) - JCE. I hate Just Cause Eviction as it takes away ownership of your own property. I can live with limits on how much rent you can raise, but I want to not renew the lease for an undesirable tenant. Heck it’s easier to divorce your wife then to evict a tenant under JCE. and btw San Jose passed JCE for all properties (types and age) this year with Costa-Hawkins in place
  • I expect if this act actually get’s passed, the CAA will appeal this (with lots of support) all the way to the supreme court and rent control as a whole will get thrown out (given the current conservative bent of the supreme court)

However, all the above is going to take years to play out, i don’t want to let Costa-Hawkins be repealed eventho’ it doesn’t benefit me today because it’s a slippery slope.

To throw something provocative out. Wifey is politically apathetic but hates rent control with a passion. She came up with an interesting idea. If the problem is to provide affordable housing, do away with rent control, raise the taxes on rental properties (so that everyone is equal in treatment) and take the tax money to build public housing (not Section 8 voucher funding. she believes and i agree in many instances Section 8 vouchers are a scam).

But I don’t see anyone biting on public housing since we have been walking away from that for the last 20-30 years. (seems to have worked out ok in Singapore and other countries tho’ - public housing that is)

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Just cause eviction is a consequence of rent control. As long as you have rent control, just cause eviction won’t go away. Rent control will cause rental shortage due to extremely low turnover. When it’s extremely difficult to find a rental housing, tenants will figh for just cause eviction for sure

It will definitely make it to the ballot if they even bother trying. All it takes is getting a certain number of signatures, and that number is very low this year. Most people will sign things when asked, and the cost for sigs is around $1-2 per sig. So someone simply donates $500K, and you’re done.

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Now where are all the people that think it’s great everyone can vote without any voter ID laws that require photo ID? People might be wishing for the days when only land owners could vote. The founders knew allowing everyone to vote would eventually lead to mob mentality, violation of property rights, then confiscation or property. I wonder which way illegals will vote?

Founders also said blacks should be slaves and women kept to kitchen. Time has changed and progress has been made.

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My take is the reason for a law like Costa-Hawkings to exist is to prevent municipalities to pass rent control laws that are too extreme, and certainly it’s because this type of municipality does exist. As a landlord I do pity the low-income tenants who have to spend a large portion of their income on rents. They are the most vulnerable and my personal opinion is they do deserve a certain amount of protection to prevent mass displacement. I would support rent control if the terms of the rent control law is reasonable that are fair to landlords.

My main position on rent control is still the same as before. Rent control shouldn’t be permanent. It’s the worst nightmare for any landlord and I don’t believe anyone can say with a straight face that it’s fair to landlord to be locked into a tenant forever, below market rent or not. Protection should have an expiration date (so should section 8 vouchers, but that’s another story). If the rent control law says once a tenant has entered into protection status in a unit then X number of years later the protection will go away it would be a much more reasonable way to implement protection for both sides and I think most landlords would support this. Exactly how big X needs to be can be up for debate, but X shouldn’t be infinity. When you declare X to be infinity, how can this be fair even if you consider all the social goodness that rent control brings about?

But in today’s environment, a reasonable rent control implementation will never happen in California. No municipality has implemented means testing for rent control protection. In SF it’s not even possible to discuss that. The tenant advocates killed any possible discussion on this topic for fear of reducing their voting base. With that kind of behavior one can expect SF will enact rent control and vacancy control for all properties as soon as Costa-Hawkins is repealed (if it happens). It is this kind of extremity that caused a law like Costa-Hawkins to be developed in the first place.

My view on the rent control fight is this. We have rent control in the US in multiple places. There have been numerous lawsuits on the legality of rent control all the way to supreme court, and they all lost. So basically the supreme court thinks rent control is NOT a violation of property rights. It doesn’t matter what you and I think. The constitution has been interpreted to be in support of rent control. Given that guideline, if I were a tenant, why not maximize my benefits by passing a rent control law if I can get the tenant majority to out-vote the evil landlords? Tenants certainly understand the downside that comes with rent control. People are not stupid. But who cares? I get to enjoy housing stability from rent control. If the economy hurts, so be it. If it’s unfair to landlords, not my problem.

In the end it’s just a power struggle. The pros and cons of rent control can be debated and reasoned, but it doesn’t matter. Whoever has the majority of the votes wins.

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Sincerely agree. No entitlement should last indefinitely (wether it’s rent control or anything else).

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The price-fixing part of rent control is legit. It’s the just-cause eviction part that’s problematic. I think we may have a case there.