With rules like that, there will be no rental properties at all. How does this help the poorer residents long term? Oh, there won’t be any.
“With rules like that...”
Bingo. The article doesn’t take
an economist’s stance. Tenant
“protections” are the disincentives
for landlords that create lower
supply and higher rental prices.
Pols know that and use it to make
themselves the perpetual saviors of
“the little guy.” The US constitution
was written to allow only property
owners the right to vote for a reason:
“the little guy” can’t figure out why
he’s being had.
My wife and I are currently remodeling her mother's vacant home in San Francisco. When she became unable to care for herself, we took her in for a year, then we placed her in assisted living. A couple of my wife's siblings took legal action against us, trying to wrest control from my wife, because the greedy jerks wanted an early inheritance (trying to borrow against the mom's assets). One of their lawyer's claims was that we were not generating income from renting the vacant house. We successfully fended them off.
We could get easily get $3500 to $5000 a month rent from the property, but see no reason to do so because of the SF rental rules being against property owners. So it's been vacant almost three years while we slowly renovate it for potential sale. Meanwhile, it goes up about ten percent in value every year because of the hot real estate market. That more than offsets any profits from rent. Potential $40,000 a year in rent before deducting expenses, versus $100,000 a year in increasing value while vacant. Home is worth well over $1 mil, multiple bidders common with sales hundreds of thousands over asking prices. Lots of buyers as well as renters. Lots of people afraid to convert to rental market. We're keeping it off the rental market.