I'm amused nobody brought the word Gentrification to the comments yet.
Yes, the arcticle does not mention that word. Neither the comments there or the comments here.
But this is what giving up rent control encourages: gentrification. And it's really bad.
I'm not a US citizen, I don't live there, but I've visited SF quite a few times. You can see gentrification happening yearly after every visit. It's sad.
Perhaps the discussion should not be "rent control" vs "no rent control" and really "how to effectivelly control rent prices".
In Brazil, landlords are allowed to raise the rent every year by the same ammount of one of the country's inflation indexes. It's not perfect, but people seem to be more or less happy with it.
Also the rent price can never be more than a small percentage of the property's declared value per month (if you want to change the declared value, your ownership taxes will change accordingly). This helps a bit.
This is just an example of my point: stop thinking binary - yes or no - and start thinking how.
Yes, the arcticle does not mention that word. Neither the comments there or the comments here.
But this is what giving up rent control encourages: gentrification. And it's really bad.
I'm not a US citizen, I don't live there, but I've visited SF quite a few times. You can see gentrification happening yearly after every visit. It's sad.
Perhaps the discussion should not be "rent control" vs "no rent control" and really "how to effectivelly control rent prices".
In Brazil, landlords are allowed to raise the rent every year by the same ammount of one of the country's inflation indexes. It's not perfect, but people seem to be more or less happy with it.
Also the rent price can never be more than a small percentage of the property's declared value per month (if you want to change the declared value, your ownership taxes will change accordingly). This helps a bit.
This is just an example of my point: stop thinking binary - yes or no - and start thinking how.