Sunday, June 17, 2012

How San Francisco Rent Control Laws Distort the City's Housing Market and Benefit the Rich

SF Chronicle -- "Well-to-do people are taking advantage of San Francisco's long-protected practice of limiting rent increases to preserve affordable housing by using their cheap apartments as weekend getaways. Attorney Andrew Zacks represents landlords who work with the city to push out these cheaters. He says these tenants are cynically playing the system.

"You have this class of very rich, elite people benefiting from rent control," he said. "They have a good deal on a $500 or $800 place on Nob Hill and they use it as a pied-a-terre when they come into the city."

The situation is so out of whack it has accomplished the nearly impossible - some people are actually feeling sorry for landlords."


2 Comments:

At 6/17/2012 1:39 PM, Blogger NormanB said...

SF has the lowest home ownership rate in the country and the Board of Supervisors are worried because families are moving out. All of this is because SF caters to renters not those nasty owners. Don't screw with the market is what they should learn but never will. You can't draft a good enough of a law to beat nature.

 
At 6/18/2012 12:26 PM, Blogger Mike said...

I don't know much about the property tax laws in CA (I believe they are heavily capped to avoid extreme increases) but I'm surprised they don't have a similar system to what we have in Texas. If you live in the home full-time, you get a homestead exemption...if not, the tax is higher.
Stunning that the regulation headquarters of the US hasn't figured out a way to encourage "reasonable rents" and discourage everything else.
One would think that rent control would only apply to full-time residents.

 

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