
California Today: Why Rent Control Groups Are Taking the Fight to Silicon Valley - bko
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/us/california-today-rent-control.html
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erentz
I've recently (as of four weeks ago) moved to silicon valley. I am _amazed_ at
how much wasted land there is here used as car parks, or sprawling one and two
store buildings, or just flat out vacant. (There is a _lot_ of vacant land.) I
am also pleasantly surprised by the potential I see all around here for in-
fill, and intensifying neighborhoods, or just outright building entirely new
towns on top of that sprawl of car parks and office parks.

The solution to housing costs is _not_ rent control. It is better urban
planning, and building more houses. Sadly half of the examples of
intensification I see here are miserable, soul crushing places, huge
monolithic superblocks of mid-rise cookie cutter apartments on-top of parking
that you only access by driving into your building and driving out of your
building.

South bay could practically be a utopia if it pulled it's head out of its car
loving ass.

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pascalxus
The housing problem in the bay area has nothing to do with space. There's
plenty of space in most places, or at least enough room for greater density.
Even as far out as Fairfield, you can see miles and miles of empty space, and
yet all the stupid little houses are bunched up into a tiny little lot,
surrounded by nothing but land.

The problem, as you said, is land use policy and regulations. All these rent
control rules drive up the cost of building more housing, further constraining
supply, causing even greater rent control... It's a downward spiral of epic
proportions.

The true root of the problem is a lack of basic economic education. I've been
viewing my voter election material, and there are countless politicians who
freely admit that they've been "preserving open spaces", "preventing new
construction and building" and even bragging about it! This tells you
something about the general public: they don't understand (or believe in) the
first thing about supply and demand. They just don't understand that more
regulation leads to less supply, which leads to even higher housing prices.

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johan_larson
> They just don't understand that more regulation leads to less supply, which
> leads to even higher housing prices.

Maybe. Or maybe they understand it just fine and don't care. Prosperous anti-
growth types want a) their houses to grow more valuable and b) their
neighborhoods to stay the way they are. Some of the leftier ones also don't
want poor people to be forced out of their homes. All of these are reasonable
things to want. It's just that making them happen has nasty consequences.

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msoad
Rent control is anti-market. You can never control the rent control and end up
with rich people taking advantage of it and poor people paying extra because
market is adjusted without those rent controlled units...

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r00fus
The market is distorted. Is it sustainable when you have to make $216k/yr [1]
to even afford rent (not mortgage) on a 2bdrm?

[1] [http://sf.curbed.com/2016/5/17/11692468/rent-
salary-2016-san...](http://sf.curbed.com/2016/5/17/11692468/rent-
salary-2016-san-francisco-)

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ThrustVectoring
The answer isn't to further distort the market with more price ceilings. All
that will do is further mis-allocate resources.

