Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Double the building instead of doubling the rents -- same money


"A North Beach [San Francisco] tenant recently received notice from his landlord that the rent on his apartment was going up from $1,800 a month to $8,000."

 

"Neil Hutchinson, who has lived in the building at Columbus and Scotland streets for six years, has been hit with a rent increase of 344 percent."
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Francisco-rent-increase-North-Beach-tenant-400-8325864.php

 

" MANHATTAN — The city’s rent-stabilized tenants will once again see a rent freeze on one-year leases."
 

"The Rent Guidelines Board voted Monday night against any increases on one-year leases and voted for a 2 percent increase on two-year leases, marking a repeat of its vote last year, which was the first time ever the board approved a rent freeze."
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160628/east-village/some-rent-stabilized-tenants-see-rent-freeze-for-second-year-row?utm_source=Manhattan&utm_campaign=5987e5d57c-Mailchimp-NYC&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7456974fe2-5987e5d57c-132509985

 

Strikes me that when rents double and triple, the same money could be going to build twice and three times as much housing instead of uselessly lining the landlords’ pockets (I think economists call this collecting rents).
 

Part of the solution, besides easing up on zoning like Seattle or happening to have plenty of land to extend construction to like Houston, might simply be a working market-realistic version of rent control like Germany and Paris and many Euro places (Singapore housing is 80% public I think).
 

Main idea: if landlords want to cash in on demand they will have to build to profit by it. Help; before we are all forced to move to Mexico!

No comments: