Rent control and housing

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Rent control and housing

esquilax: Jan 3, 2003

Main Paineframe posted:

Housing prices don't just rise on their own - there are various economic factors that affect the price. Rent control, which hamfistedly enforces price caps without addressing or even acknowledging the underlying reasons for the high prices, is pretty much guaranteed to screw up the market in some way.

SF is a perfect example - housing is too drat expensive there, but that's mainly because idiotic zoning policies and other bad decisions have resulted in an acute housing shortage for that high-demand area. Rent control would just ensure that instead of there being "no affordable apartments" there would be "no available apartments", because the high prices were just a symptom of a deeper problem that rent control didn't fix. Rent control can work as a temporary fix to keep things affordable until the deeper problem is fixed, but it's instead usually used as a crutch to hide the symptoms of the problem so that it can more easily be ignored.

Rent control and overly restrictive zoning are pretty complementary. The primary symptom of overly restrictive zoning is high prices (which is mitigated by rent control) and the primary symptom of rent control is that no new housing gets built (which is impossible anyway due to bad zoning).

Chicago is also suffering from a bad zoning problem - in a lot of areas you're not allowed to build anything except single family homes and maybe a three flat. Homeowners want to restrict the number of units to benefit from high prices. It's gotten to the point where many neighborhoods that have seen the largest growth in housing prices have actually seen a reduction in units, which is just backwards.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 15:30

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 23:54

esquilax: Jan 3, 2003

mastershakeman posted:

Are there any maps of this zoning? I thought one of the primary reasons for the 3flats was requirements for elevators on taller buildings, so it didn't make any economical sense to build that high.
That being said, you can have really high density with nonstop 3flats everywhere.

Here's one that covers a lot of it:

Yellow is non-residential only, so no homes at all.
Red is single-family homes only, so no two-flats or three-flats allowed at all.
Black allows multi-unit, but a most of it can't be over 4 floors.

Here's a more detailed map of it. Click on any of the green areas, it will tell you the zone. It's hard to build much more than a two-flat in R-3 zones.
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1HmI6PT0q7rFbEXDfEt2VTbFyZVLZn__58AUe86E#map:id=4

With explanation of zoning type.
http://secondcityzoning.org/zones#R

A guy I know runs a really good blog on Chicago housing and zoning, it's been getting a lot of press lately. The first map is from there.
http://danielkayhertz.com/

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 19:27

esquilax: Jan 3, 2003

say no to scurvy posted:

Rent control is not supposed to help anyone get an apartment. Rent control is not supposed to increase the housing supply. Rent control is not supposed to solve demand. It does the opposite of those things because it is intended to do the opposite of those things. Rent control is not economic policy, stop projecting your wants onto it.

One of the main goals of rent control is supposed to increase the supply of affordable housing, and attempts to do so by lowering rent below market rates. Whether or not it is able to accomplish this is very relevant to local policy, and is literally the thread topic and the subject of the OP

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 21:49

esquilax: Jan 3, 2003

nelson posted:

To encourage development I would first change zoning and permits to allow building high density (preferably mixed use) housing. Second I would change the property tax structure so that land itself was taxed much higher but the improvements/developments on the land weren't taxed on top of that. This would discourage speculators from just sitting on underdeveloped property waiting for prices to rise. Either develop it or sell it to someone who will. Just holding on to it wouldn't be worth the tax burden.

Well the issue with basing tax much more on land than with unit is that you're building higher density housing with not a lot of increase in taxes. If the taxes go to schools (etc) you'd have an increase in students without a corresponding increase in funding.

But yeah, zoning in a lot of cases is pretty ridiculous. It should be relatively easy to fix from a gentrification standpoint - if the locals are worried about rising rents they can push for denser zoning. Which is a much better solution and is more plausible to accomplish than, say, using eminent domain to build a high rise.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2014 15:18

esquilax: Jan 3, 2003

EB Nulshit posted:

Why is eminent domain being mentioned? Buildings go up for sale all the time. Buy a small one, stop renewing the leases, demolish it, and build a taller one. What's the need for eminent domain?

I mentioned it because other people were talking about it, and I think it's silly to talk about it.

Zoning is the issue, since in many cases you are not even allowed to build taller buildings. Changing zoning to allow people to build taller buildings is a major first step in the local fight against rising rents and home prices. In many areas, it may be the only step needed.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2014 15:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Rent control and housing