How fucked up is the progressive definition of "freedom"?

[Guest032516]

I didn't want to hijack Yssup's distorted thread, but here is a slice of life from progressive heaven - New York City:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/b...vNbPuJrdxDB8zI

Rent control and rent stabilization have produced the most fucked up, over-priced UN-FREE housing market in the country. It turns residents into scammers and forces landlords to watch tenants like a hawk.

This scammer lived for FOUR years in her dead aunt's 550 square foot apartment for $287 per month.

The rent should have been about $2200 per month. So she is being sued for over $400K.

My living room is bigger that that 550 square foot apartment. And in Brooklyn (not even Manhattan) it is worth $2200.

But the only reason the rent is that high in the first place is that so much of NY's apartments are rent-controlled. Builders are reluctant to tear down older buildings and put up bigger, better ones because they are forced to set aside a percentage of units for low income tenants. So, not enough new housing gets built and the prices of the units that are NOT subject to rent control goes through the roof.

So, 70% of the tenants pay $4K per month for a tiny apartment and effectively subsidize the $500 per month rent of the other 30%.

If they simply got rid of the rent control laws and freely granted building permits, all of the old shitty units would get replaced by better units and the total number of units would increase. That would drop the top prices way down, although it would eliminate the $287 per month units.

So be it. Let the city government provide rent subsidies to the poor. But let the market reflect TRUE prices.

[cptjohnstone]

that is why you are ExNYer

sounds like $100,000 just gets you by in New York

[CuteOldGuy]

There is no progressive definition of freedom.

[Yssup Rider]

nor libertarian. freedom is freedom.

But dipshits...

[timpage]

Yeah, I'm sure rent would go down under your plan. Are you fucking serious?


QUOTE=ExNYer;1052620371]I didn't want to hijack Yssup's distorted thread, but here is a slice of life from progressive heaven - New York City:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/b...vNbPuJrdxDB8zI

Rent control and rent stabilization have produced the most fucked up, over-priced UN-FREE housing market in the country. It turns residents into scammers and forces landlords to watch tenants like a hawk.

This scammer lived for FOUR years in her dead aunt's 550 square foot apartment for $287 per month.

The rent should have been about $2200 per month. So she is being sued for over $400K.

My living room is bigger that that 550 square foot apartment. And in Brooklyn (not even Manhattan) it is worth $2200.

But the only reason the rent is that high in the first place is that so much of NY's apartments are rent-controlled. Builders are reluctant to tear down older buildings and put up bigger, better ones because they are forced to set aside a percentage of units for low income tenants. So, not enough new housing gets built and the prices of the units that are NOT subject to rent control goes through the roof.

So, 70% of the tenants pay $4K per month for a tiny apartment and effectively subsidize the $500 per month rent of the other 30%.

If they simply got rid of the rent control laws and freely granted building permits, all of the old shitty units would get replaced by better units and the total number of units would increase. That would drop the top prices way down, although it would eliminate the $287 per month units.

So be it. Let the city government provide rent subsidies to the poor. But let the market reflect TRUE prices.[/QUOTE]

[Guest032516]

Originally Posted by timpage

Yeah, I'm sure rent would go down under your plan. Are you fucking serious?

Yeah, are you?

Maybe I have my progressives mixed up, but aren't you the one in an recent healthcare thread who advocated graduating an extra 100,000 doctors in order to flood the market with doctors to keep the prices of healthcare down?

Clearly you understand the effect on prices on excess supply. If it works in medicine, it will certainly work in housing. Why not dump the rent control/stabilization laws and let developers build without requirements to provide new cheap apartments for the low-income folks displaced from old cheap apartments?

Right now, very little new apartment housing gets built in the five boroughs. The market is tightly regulated by the city, which forces landlords to set aside a certain percentage of units for low-income people. This, in effect, jacks up the rent on everyone else in the building. There was a recent article in the NY Post about full-rent tenants in a recently built apartment complaining about the smell of pot coming through the ventilation shafts from the section of the building where the Section 8 housing tenants lived. 70% of the people were paying rents over $3500 and the others were paying about $500 - although they apparently had sufficient money for drugs.

Let landlord flattens the old housing units and put up bigger new ones. As the number of units increases, prices will fall. The top end rents will drop from $4k a month to maybe $2500-$3000 and the placed will be much nicer.

The bottom level rents will rise from $300 to closer to $1000. If the low income families can't afford it, then let the city/state pay the $700 difference in the rent. That way the rent subsidy gets spread across all of the taxpayers in the state, not just the other tenants in that building.

Why is it that the rest of the country can get by without the byzantine rent control regulations that NY has in place? And maybe SF (I think)

[Texas Contrarian]

In my opinion, ExNYer is exactly right.

Price controls of all types rarely work as intended and often produce very destructive adverse consequences. Rent control as applied in cities like New York is no exception, and over the long run actually hurts many of the people it purports to help.

But while it's certainly part of the picture, this isn't just about making way for new construction. In instances where that's uneconomic, it's important to properly maintain existing apartment units, and it's pretty hard for landlords to do that if cash flow from operations never allows refinancing out enough equity to rehab units.

An apartment unit is not something that pays dividends virtually forever, and never needs attention. If you want to see a complex appreciate in value over time (or, for that matter, even maintain its value), it is critically important to rehab interiors every few years. This includes flooring, cabinets, countertops, plumbing fixtures, paint, wallpaper, window blinds, etc. If the landlord fails to do this, the property will deteriorate over time and eventually become virtually uninhabitable.

Although there are many types of loan products available, a typical multi-family loan is due in 10 years with 30-year amortization. Smart owners establish reserves for unit rehabs during the loan period, as well as plan to do substantial upgrades when it's time to refinance, or when the property's cash flow allows placing a second.

Rent controls make all of that very difficult, so units tend to go for very long periods of time without attention and maintenance, and the housing stock simply deteriorates. The net effect is that this ends up being bad for everyone, including those who were intended to be the beneficiaries of the policies.

That's why it's far better to simply give vouchers to low-income tenants, who then will have a better chance of living in a decently maintained place.

And, yes, San Francisco suffers from the same malady.

Speaking of unintended consequences, I came across this just about a year ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/us...sequences.html

Not exactly a wonderful progressive vision, is it?

[Jewish Lawyer]

This is probably what the liberal rent control idiots want. They just hate free market capitalism, except for the tax proceeds they get to spend.
Rent control, affirmative action, construction quotas - all from the minds of assholes who don't trust the market to do the right thing given enough time.

[wellendowed1911]

Originally Posted by ExNYer

I didn't want to hijack Yssup's distorted thread, but here is a slice of life from progressive heaven - New York City:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/b...vNbPuJrdxDB8zI

Rent control and rent stabilization have produced the most fucked up, over-priced UN-FREE housing market in the country. It turns residents into scammers and forces landlords to watch tenants like a hawk.

This scammer lived for FOUR years in her dead aunt's 550 square foot apartment for $287 per month.

The rent should have been about $2200 per month. So she is being sued for over $400K.

My living room is bigger that that 550 square foot apartment. And in Brooklyn (not even Manhattan) it is worth $2200.

But the only reason the rent is that high in the first place is that so much of NY's apartments are rent-controlled. Builders are reluctant to tear down older buildings and put up bigger, better ones because they are forced to set aside a percentage of units for low income tenants. So, not enough new housing gets built and the prices of the units that are NOT subject to rent control goes through the roof.

So, 70% of the tenants pay $4K per month for a tiny apartment and effectively subsidize the $500 per month rent of the other 30%.

If they simply got rid of the rent control laws and freely granted building permits, all of the old shitty units would get replaced by better units and the total number of units would increase. That would drop the top prices way down, although it would eliminate the $287 per month units.

So be it. Let the city government provide rent subsidies to the poor. But let the market reflect TRUE prices.

EX-NYER I am also a proud NY'er grow up in Queens- and although I am in Dallas- I am still NY to home I know so very well what you are talking about- 3 years ago one of my childhood friends came to visit me in Texas and he could not believe the housing prices- basically 250k in North Dallas, Plano or Allen will get you a very nice 2 story home in a good neighborhood- to the folks who never been to NY- 250k will get you NOTHING in NY- if you go to a Real Estate agent in NY and tell them you want to spend 250 to 300k on a nice 2 story home in a nice neighborhood they will laugh at you and probably call the police to get you into a psych ward. Good article Ex-NYer.