
Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco - nwsm
https://sf.curbed.com/2017/11/3/16603900/rent-control-san-francisco-stanford-study-gentrification
======
ThrustVectoring
Another second-order effect of rent control is increased traffic. Suppose you
have two residents with significantly below-market-rate housing at the same
quality level, one in downtown SF and another in Mountain View. The former
starts a new job at Google in Mountain View, the latter starts a new job at a
trendy start-up in downtown SF. Since they're paying significantly below
market rate, they're unable to trade apartments with each other without paying
a significant amount of money.

So, because you cannot trade apartments without spending significantly more
money, there's a couple of hour-long commutes instead. This is part of a
general pattern - messing with prices doesn't help, since the market still has
to clear. You just start paying in things other than money. Paying for things
with money is great in general, since then someone else has the money. Paying
for things with a longer commute is terrible, since there's no beneficiary.

~~~
nerfhammer
The term for this is called "labor mobility".

Instead of increasing commute times, more typically it involves simply not
taking jobs that are further away.

Restricting labor mobility is really bad for obvious reasons: people not being
able to move where the jobs are means jobs not being filled even as
unemployment increases. There is overwhelming evidence that labor mobility has
gotten drastically worse in recent decades, and local NIMBYism is one of the
major causes: [http://neighborhoodeffects.mercatus.org/2017/01/26/why-
the-l...](http://neighborhoodeffects.mercatus.org/2017/01/26/why-the-lack-of-
labor-mobility-in-the-u-s-is-a-problem-and-how-we-can-fix-it/)

Compare this to China, which has had tens of millions of people flock to brand
new megacities for the new job opportunities there.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
China is a bad example with its hukou system in place. Sure you can migrate to
the city for a better job but you have to leave your kids behind (no public
school without hukou). Labor mobility but at great costs.

~~~
klipt
Seems comparable to immigration controls between countries.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It’s more comparable to the movement controls of apartheid.

~~~
klipt
Arguably, immigration controls are also similar to the movement controls of
Apartheid. They're just more socially acceptable because pretty much every
country does it.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Sure. But discriminating on your own citizens based on where they were born
(or where their parents were born in china’s case) is extra douchey.

~~~
klipt
I believe you can change Hukou after a few years so it's not strictly where
they were born.

Many American state universities discriminate against students based on where
their parents live (e.g. charging in-state vs out-of-state tuition).

~~~
seanmcdirmid
A. Yes but it’s very hard. You have to marry in it or be a grad from a good
university in a good major.

B. Yes, but you easily get residence by living there for less than a year.
Also,public K12 schools can’t discriminate like they do in china.

------
ghouse
Rent control solves some problems. Creates other problems. Similar to almost
any intervention in free markets. Sometimes the cost of intervention outweigh
benefits, sometimes they don't.

Rent control allows people (wealthy or poor) to remain where they are without
purchasing their residence. Unfortunately, to do accomplish this objective, it
increases the price for new arrivals (be they wealthy or poor).

In California, Prop 13 does the same thing -- drives up the cost of housing
for everyone other than the people who already own a home.

~~~
dmix
> Sometimes the cost of intervention outweigh benefits, sometimes they don't.

\+ Sometimes it works for a short period, as the policy reflected the economy
at the time of creation, then becomes irrelevant via technology/market
reaction to policy/general progress... but yet stays a policy for decades.

The important point is that we rarely ever measures whether it does work or
not, and policy tends to have an extremely long shelf-life.

My ideal state would have:

1) a well-staffed multi-partisan agency entirely dedicated to reviewing
policy, with a mandate of removing any policy having a net-detrimental effect
on society. By launching scientific studies of the effects with subpoena power
over other agencies, making policy recommendations, and potentially the power
to temporarily suspend regulations until reviewed by congress.

2) require timeframes attached to most policies, forcing future reviews which
must factor in measured results (likely from agency mentioned in 1) or face
expiry

~~~
tomohawk
Heinlen in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" introduces the idea of a legislature
with 2 chambers. One for creating laws and the other for getting rid of them.
The threshold for creating them being higher.

The way it is now, everything is geared towards "doing" things, and credit is
received for "accomplishments". Its usually much harder to undo things. It
would be refreshing to have specialists in undoing things.

~~~
tooltalk
IMO, there should be automatic sunset provision in every law passed in this
country, like the one existed for the Patriotic Act, and reviewed, renewed or
expired every 5 or 10 years.

~~~
ridgeguy
I hate the Patriot Act too, but beware unintended consequences.

How do you feel about laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

I think that law continues to serve our society well. And I'm certain it would
not be renewed by our current Federal government.

Ditto for regulations on water, sewage, pharma purity and many other laws that
facilitate civilization. It's all very nice to say 'sunset every law', but we
depend on many of them being in place.

Like removing redundant rivets on an aircraft. You can't be sure which ones
are critical. The cost of discovering that can be quite high.

~~~
dmix
> How do you feel about laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964? I think that
> law continues to serve our society well.

Maybe certain parts of it - yes. But I've read many articles talking about how
housing segregation is far worse than it was even before the civil rights act.

The act explicitly cites this problem yet completely failed to address it.

Some acts can have obvious no-debate reenactment. But this deters broad
sweeping legislation from being passed, if subsets are not well thought out or
are pigeonholed in. Why not pin sections onto acts so you can easily repeat
ones with strong data/political support, while ending other less effective
parts?

That said, there should no doubt be a dichotomy between human rights and
constitutional limitations (which are pre-emptive limitations on legislation)
and the general type of policies passed by congress.

My primary focus is on economy law as well. Social law might be more socially
evolutionary.

------
theduro
Rent control is a failed experiment. All it does is force land lords to
massively increase rent amounts when someone moves out to account for multi-
year market increases.

Basically, if the real market price of an apartment is ~$3,000/mo, but in 5
years it realistically would be $5,000, they will simply list it for $5,000
now, to mitigate the loss.

My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles (a very fair one at that), and
is also about as bleeding heart liberal as you can get. She is a staunch
opponent of rent control.

~~~
bendmorris
>My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles ... She is a staunch opponent
of rent control.

Is this supposed to be surprising...? Regardless of whether it works for
tenants, obviously rent control isn't there for the landlord's benefit.

~~~
paulgb
Having read up on some of the building purchases in my own neighborhood (East
Village of NYC), it seems that rent control is bad for honest landlords and
good for the slimey ones who are willing to "encourage" people to leave. And
thanks to Coase's theorem the building sales are usually in that direction.

~~~
noobermin
Wouldn't the fix be to stop the slimey ones from "encouraging" people to leave
in the first place?

It sounds like blaming the game rather than striking out against those who
abuse it.

~~~
jules
It's not a question of blame, it's a question of the results of a particular
policy. Rent control creates an incentive for landlords to bully their
tenants. You can create another government agency to police this, but in
reality that is extremely difficult because you can do a lot of bad things
legally, and trying to police that will have negative unintended consequences
in itself. It also causes bad behavior that would be impossible or incredibly
undesirable to police, such as simply neglecting the state of the housing and
shared spaces. We've already learned decades ago that rent controlled housing
rapidly deteriorates.

Perhaps another example: the drug war. Making marihuana illegal creates
criminal activity other than just selling it. You could say "okay, so just
police that", but that's not so easy in the real world, and we've seen the
negative consequences of attempting it.

A lot of problems would be solved if politicians thought less about the
intentions of their policies and more about the incentives those policies
create. Too many policies make bad behavior rational. Even worse is that once
you do that it's not just that good people start behaving badly, but also that
bad actors out compete the good ones. A good policy aligns self interest with
the common interest.

~~~
noobermin
You're going to have to help me. I don't know what you mean by "bad behavior
that would be[...]undesirable to police." It seems very abstract, and because
of that, is less than convincing. Please give me an explicit example of that.

For example, how does, "rent-control => neglect the state of housing" That
happens already _without_ rent-control.

~~~
anthuswilliams
It's true that there are many landlords who provide ill-managed, neglected
housing even in areas without rent control. However, rent control exacerbates
that problem, in my opinion, for two reasons:

1) It incentivizes the landlord to shorten the amount of time a particular
tenant will inhabit the property, because it is only when a tenant leaves and
a new one comes in that the landlord is free to jack up the rent to market
rates.

2) It compels the landlord to lower his expenses in order to ensure that his
investment stays profitable. Ordinarily, a landlord is constrained by a desire
to keep a property that will attract and retain good tenants, but since that
is no longer (as much of) a factor, he will avoid making repairs and
enhancements except in emergency situations where the law requires him to.

Source: landlord (albeit one who has never worked in an area with rent control
policies)

------
Lazare
Note: Everyone (in the economics world, anyhow) has known that rent control
does this for a long time. There's no controversy here; left, right,
socialist, Chicago-school, heterodox, mainstream: It's a known thing.

This study is interesting primarily because it tries to put some hard numbers
on _how much_ it drives up the cost of housing.

------
8ytecoder
Another point which is usually not well-discussed, the houses/apts in SF are
really bad in terms of quality, amenities and features. With new housing, this
is starting to change a little bit. But, overall, rent control results in
really bad maintenance. Landlords do the absolute bare minimum to not get
sued/fined. For the rent people in SF pay, the value they derive is almost a
joke.

~~~
seandougall
> Landlords do the absolute bare minimum to not get sued/fined.

IME, this is a pretty universal statement.

Hop across the bridge to cities without rent control and you'll see the same
thing. The problem isn't any specific policy, it's the power balance between
landlord and tenant created by a market with limited supply and ever-growing
demand.

~~~
8ytecoder
Those are typically cities with lower demand. I'm on the other side of the bay
as well and my building was recently renovated and upscaled quite a bit to
take advantage of the new demand.

------
refurb
This is what new rent control regulations in Toronto are doing...

 _More than 1,000 planned purpose-built rental units have instead been
converted to condominiums in the Greater Toronto Area since Premier Kathleen
Wynne 's government expanded rent control_[1]

It's making the housing crisis worse, not better. For those who already have
low rent locked in, it's the ultimate "f __k you, I got mine. "

[1][https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/report-
finds-1...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/report-
finds-1000-planned-rental-units-convert-to-condos-in-wake-of-ontario-rent-
control-expansion/article36382681/)

~~~
boomboomsubban
>This is what new rent control regulations in Toronto are doing...

*according to the landlord lobbying group based on unknown data that even the report says they cannot guarantee the accuracy of.

~~~
icelancer
Look into any study based in NYC on rent control. The exact same things
happen; rental properties are quickly converted to condos.

------
snidane
The problem here is the character of current housing markets causing the
progress and poverty paradox. Rent control then is just (quite unfortunate)
measure to mitigate the poverty problem when rents rise rapidly.

The paradox occurs because rent prices are much more flexible than peoples'
income. If you have rapid increase in wages (like in SF area), then landlords
match the increase by raising rents even faster than the wages rose and the
tenants don't get no better services nor quality of living. Just higher prices
they have to pay.

That supply and demand determine the price is like describing gravity as
"things just fall to the ground when dropped". While true, these tell you
nothing about how fast things fall nor where the market prices stabilize.

To see where rent levels come from and why they match up with general income
level for a given locality, look at David Ricardo's "law of rent" (introduced
in 1809), which tells you exactly that. It basically tells you that rents
increase exactly to the level that wages increased. Therefore eating away all
technological progress and only giving you higher rents and house prices. This
is the progress and poverty paradox. The harder the society works, the larger
wealth gap and poverty.

Failing to understand the cause of all this people just slap some random
regulation to alleviate the problem - in this case the rent control.

\--- To observe the law of rent, simply look at the fact that rents almost
exactly match some general level of income of majority of bottom workers so
that they barely get by and don't save a cent. Any excess goes to rent.

Just plot wage vs rent of any city on earth and you'll see it.

------
wycs
>The solution is to stop allowance of condo conversions or TIC (Tenancy In
Common) conversions,” she said.

You can always trust them to keep digging.

------
bigmanwalter
In Montreal, we have rent control that has worked spectacularly. Rent is
significantly below what it costs in comparable cities across Canada, the
United States and even Europe. This all stems from our laws originating in
French common law which is decidedly more for-the-people than British law.

Our rent control works because it applies between leases. Last year rent
increases were frozen at 0.5%. In the apartment that I moved into, the
landlord is not allowed to increase the rent more than 0.5% above what the
previous tenant was paying. Increase are also allowed in order to reflect any
major renovations performed to the unit. Increases due to renovations must be
anchored to the cost of the renovation, and distributed over the next 10 years
of rental. This system works spectacularly for renters. Some people may argue
that this leads to more slums, but it effectively incentivises landlords to
renovate their units in order to maximize their returns.

~~~
patricius
How does it work from the landlord’s perspective?

~~~
bigmanwalter
The landlord is allowed to ask for whatever price they want. After signing the
lease, if the landlord has made an illegal rent increase, the tenant can ask
for a hearing before the Housing Authority (Régie de Logement). In the
hearing, a judge will reduce the rent retroactively to the maximum allowed
increase.

If a tenant refuses to pay a rent increase, the landlord may apply for a
hearing before the Housing Authority to have the tenant evicted, but the judge
will take the illegality of the rent increase into consideration before giving
permission to evict.

------
KirinDave
I really wish the submitter of this story did a better job than repeating the
clickbait title at Curbed. Because this article is actually a fairly good
summary of an interesting paper which has a lot to say about the mixed results
of rent control as a long-term strategy.

But no, instead we get this, "Rent Control Is Uniformly Bad" title which is
designed to split the demo and bring in people who want to argue.

Surely we can do better!

~~~
dang
Happy to change it, but I couldn't think of a better one. Actually we briefly
changed the URL to [https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/02/rent-control-
policy-l...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/02/rent-control-policy-
likely-fueled-the-gentrification-of-san-francisco-study-finds/), which has the
title "Rent-control policy `likely fueled the gentrification of San
Francisco,’ study finds" — is that better?

(We changed the URL back because it's not clear that that article has more
information in it.)

------
ggg9990
Rent control is just one of the ways that people who are in a place benefit
themselves at the expense of the people who are not yet there (and thus don’t
get to vote).

------
notadoc
San Francisco needs to build high rise apartments and condos with tons of
units, and lots of them.

That's all there is to it. Obsessing about rent control, population numbers,
tech workers, or whatever else is nothing but a distraction. Dramatically
increase supply and prices will drop.

~~~
asah
Don't forget about transit.

------
kelnos
This shouldn't be surprising; this is an obvious result of rent control.

If rent control isn't applied to all rental units (as is the case in SF), then
the units not under rent control end up being higher than average to make up
for the units under rent control.

Even if rent control is applied to all rental units, then you see large spikes
in rent that are speculative to several years in the future whenever a tenant
moves out and the unit is re-listed.

The problem is that you can't just kill rent control and expect everything to
be ok overnight, especially in a place like SF where the housing supply is
constrained. Two things:

1) Demand outstrips supply even at the high prices commanded by non-rent-
controlled units, so if you were to kill rent control here, the only thing
that would happen would be that the units that were previously subject to rent
control will get price hikes. I wouldn't expect rents to fall for the units
that were never subject to rent control, because there are still people
willing to pay those prices to live here, even if they'd prefer something
lower.

2) Even if I'm not entirely correct, and there is enough supply that the
overall market rate actually would be lower than the current market rate for
non-controlled units, we'd still lose a lot of lower-income residents; I would
be very surprised to find many (if any) landlords in the city who wouldn't
raise rents at least modestly if their units stopped being subject to rent
control. Some of the less exploitative ones might work with their existing
tenants so as not to force them out of the city, but there are a lot of people
in SF in rent-controlled housing that can't afford much more in the way of
increases than rent control allows.

We need to 1) build like crazy, 2) kill rent control, 3) have some sort of
phase-out period where we subsidize housing for lower- and middle-income
people hit hardest by post-#2 rent increases. (And probably other things; I'm
no economist.)

------
jrs95
This is almost irrelevant if they don’t get the supply issues worked out.

~~~
jedberg
Why would I build new supply if I'm going to be stuck renting it out under
rent control? If I already own a property, how can I build more if I can't
raise rents on my current properties to market rates so I can afford to build
new buildings at market rates?

Rent control causes supply issues. Look at the City of Berkeley. Their supply
increased massively right after rent control was lifted in 1997.

~~~
hcknwscommenter
New supply is NOT subject to rent control in any way shape or form. Only non-
single family housing that was built before 1979 (or maybe 1980) has rent
control. Nothing built after that is rent controlled at all.

~~~
charleslmunger
This is sort of true, but in practice (in the bay area) new construction only
happens at the whims of neighbors. Since rent controlled tenants are totally
insulated from supply and demand, it's common for tenants to only evaluate
their annoyance with new construction, and not the beneficial effects on the
rental market. Renters can only be NIMBYs even they're locked in by rent
control.

------
jadbox
Could this be Coase Theorem in effect? As transaction costs/restrictions go
up, the market also becomes increasingly inefficient?

------
joeblau
I had a friend that lived on Pine and Stockton in a rent controlled apartment.
His rent was around $1400 a month for a 1 bedroom decent sized apartment (900
sq ft). He moved out and the landlord immediately made some _upgrades_ to the
apartment and the next tenant living there was paying $3300 a month. It wasn't
even feasible for my friend to move out and then move right back in to the
same place he just left.

------
xster
Basically it's like a progressive tax system. How the income is sourced
doesn't affect the budget expenditure in the end. And instead of varying on
your income bracket, it varies on how early you got in the queue, which has
nothing to do with fairness.

i.e., if you want to change the budget expenditure (how many people live in
SF), shifting how the budget income is sourced wouldn't help.

------
bsder
Possibly. But Prop 13 is the real problem.

~~~
pzone
Both of them are bad, restrictions on new development are even worse. It's a
huge, huge mess.

------
vinniejames
Of course it is. It artificially limits supply due to long term rent squatters
taking advantage of the system

~~~
cyberpunk0
Aka people who lived there before the insane hikes in cost with rent control
being the only thing keeping them from being forced out of their home due to
greed-driven economic practices

~~~
vinniejames
As in, yes, people don't give up those leases. Instead they pass them on to
friends, then friends of friends, etc long after they've left the city. Or
worse use them as AirBnbs to make a killing

------
cryptonector
Well, duh. Rent control causes housing shortages because who wants to be a
rent controlled landlord? Well then, housing shortages are reflected in higher
housing costs for anyone who can't benefit from having [had for a long time] a
rent-controlled apartment.

------
fnord77
I believe most of the people living in SF are renters. Getting rid of rent
control will never happen, politically.

~~~
peterjlee
Rent control is only available in units built before 1980. So renters who were
not lucky enough to find a rent controlled housing has an incentive to vote
against rent control. Though, any politician who leans one way or the other
will piss off the other group and could be a political suicide.

------
horsecaptin
What are the chances that the number of rent controlled homes will go down in
the next five to ten years?

~~~
glitch003
This number will always go down, because in SF only houses built before 1980
are subject to rent control.

Therefore, no houses are being added to rent control. And the number can only
stay constant or go down.

~~~
Decade
Except that demolishing a rent-controlled apartment is practically illegal.

And in response to the state law requiring ADUs to be legalized in single-
family homes, the Board of Supervisors wrote a law requiring ADUs in most
single-family homes to be rent-controlled.

Now one of Supervisor Safaí’s friends is even proposing a new building
voluntarily put under rent control. It may get killed by city politics,
though.

[http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Developer-
wants-t...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Developer-wants-to-
create-rent-controlled-housing-10152241.php)

------
tomohawk
Price controls always end up creating artificial scarcity. The solution to
lower housing costs is more housing, not less.

~~~
danieldisu
Maybe we need something deeper than that, you have 3/4 of your country that
are almost a wasteland and you insist on cram all the people in 4 or 5 cities.
Maybe we need to start to incentive moving people to other more empty
places...

~~~
wincy
It's not really a wasteland, though. My wife moved here from New York to
Kansas City, and her old friends act like there are cows walking down the
street or something.

If you're willing to live with diversity of political affiliation (it's a
pretty even mix of Democrat and Republican around here, and I've heard people
on HN say they'd be absolutely unwilling to live somewhere like that), you can
get a 2200 square foot house in a nice neighborhood for around 250,000. We
have an airport, IKEA, two art museums, and all sorts of interesting exhibits
to see and things to do year round. I plan on having at least four kids, if I
went to work for Google to have a house the same size would cost something
like $2,800,000? (from a quick Zillow search of somewhere like Sunnyvale if I
wanted a similar commute) So 11x more expensive? It seems like madness to me.

I know a guy who lives here but works for a big company on the coast, and he
lives in a mansion in one of the nicest neighborhoods around, and even the
local mid level tech jobs easily pay 6 figures.

I mean, I guess the weather is nice, but other than that I don't really get
it.

~~~
aidenn0
I recently looked at jobs in the Bay Area. I currently live in Southern
California, so it's not cheap where I live. To have a sub 20 minute commute
(current commute: 7 minutes) to any of the jobs I was looking at would have
added about $40k per year in costs. I probably could have been able to get an
offer at $40k more per year, but it would be moving the whole family to break
even financially.

If I could talk my wife into living somewhere with winters, then we'd probably
move to Cincinnati, since we have friends there. At my current pay we could
probably retire there when the kids are in HS.

------
Savvis
This seems obvious, no?

------
kevinthew
the issue is the lack of housing, the artificially restricted supply, not
marginal effects like rent controls. definition of missing the forest for the
trees.

------
fictionfuture
"rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to
destroy a city – except for bombing" \- Lindbeck

------
NTDF9
Of course?

------
noobermin
Did anyone read the excerpts in the article and not come to the conclusion
that rent control caused this? It sounds to me to like greedy landlords being
greedy.

It feels like the title and the thesis of the news piece is either incorrect
or at least misleading.

~~~
hindsightbias
If only landlords could be greedy with all their units, prices would average
lower.

~~~
noobermin
Your comment doesn't really address my point. The argument the article
presents has less to do with free market fundamentalism than it does with
landlords trying to get tenants of rent controlled units to leave in order to
get market rates. That seems like the issue. Blaming rent control sounds a lot
to me like blaming the victim for the crime.

~~~
icelancer
>>landlords trying to get tenants of rent controlled units to leave in order
to get market rates. That seems like the issue.

This is a simple incentive. To expect landlords not to act in this manner is
to ignore Economics 101. If you design policies and laws in such a manner that
rational actors will... act rationally... and this is bad, then the problem is
how you designed the laws, not the rational actors - no matter how "greedy"
you think they are.

~~~
noobermin
Let's teach our daughters not to wear short skirts, because that increases the
chances they'll be raped. Sounds like a similar argument.

With less hyperbole, you can use this argument regarding externalities
involved in capitalism from the exploitation of workers to pollution of
rivers. The way you change incentives is you add regulation.

Regardless, this thread is floating away from my point. No one is addressing
the actual article here, which is really discouraging and fits with the trend
of discourse on HN for the last year or so.

~~~
icelancer
It's not the same argument in the least; it's just shock value nonsense you're
pedaling in hopes of coming up with relevancy.

>>which is really discouraging and fits with the trend of discourse on HN for
the last year or so.

Yeah, the guy who is posting terrible rape analogies is the guy I trust to
judge what is or isn't discouraging with regards to the value of discourse on
this website.

~~~
noobermin
How is it not the similar? In both instances, people explain away the terrible
deeds of a person by saying they are incentivized to do x,y,z instead of
talking about whether it is right to do so and focusing on the pain it
inflicts on people.

Trying to force anyone out of a home so you can make a buck puts their
livelihood and safety at risk. You can't just excuse terrible behavior because
people are greedy.

------
45h34jh53k4j
Now, I have not read the paper, but I would have thought the free market
combined with sky-high wages and demand, combined with a lack of inventory,
was the cause.

Rent Control surely just prevents local families from being muscled out by the
tech employees?

~~~
wycs
Rent control removes the incentive to build new apartments. There are second
order effects that make it counterproductive. Even the socialist economists
agree rent control is terrible.

~~~
ghouse
So as to not remove the incentive to build new apartments, in San Francisco,
rent control only applies to units built before 1978.

The SF rent control law (like the CA Prop 13) does allow rents to increase,
but very slowly. It would be possible to have both without as strong of
adverse consequences by changing the ceiling at which both are permitted to
increase.

~~~
Kalium
> So as to not remove the incentive to build new apartments, in San Francisco,
> rent control only applies to units built before 1978.

Indeed! It's also worth mentioning that this has had the perverse side-effect
of encouraging people to find any and every way possible to block the removal
of old buildings.

Which is to say that the incentive to build new apartments has been matches
with tools designed to prevent exactly that.

