OR a smart person would do what i did when rent was still 500 a month on staten island.
work day and night for overtime and pay your rent with the first two 10 hour days and sock away money every month till it goes up. that was 17 years ago.
friend owns the house, apartment now rents for a grand, which still aint bad
Alistair Cooke famously lived in a rent control apartment in New York City. And I had the personal experience of subletting a rent controlled apartment in New York City for a summer from a very famous movie producer. He paid $800 per month for a one bedroom apartment two blocks from Times Square, but he made well into the eight figures per year. Its a scam.
Given the housing market, $735 for a five room apartment is about $1000-2000 too cheap for San Franfreako. The owner was being abused.
We have a friend who lives in Battery Park across from the WTC. $300 a month, she’s been there 41 years and will never leave.
Is she lucky or a prisoner? She does like it, the caged bird sings in this case.
It’s hard to empathize when so many non-poor people live in rent-controlled abodes. The whole thing is a rip-off.
This doesn’t seem like a rent control story. ?
Actually, rent control is a truly malevolent policy when coupled with criminal sanctions against landlords who fail to maintain standards of upkeep which often becomes impossible when the rent is controlled below market value. Landlord is caught in a squeeze and must forfeit his building, but that often incurs criminal penalties.
This article mis-states what has to happen in order for the Landlord to “move in” to his own property. Under SF housing law, the entire building has to be taken off the rental market for ten years. We have friends who live in another state who purchased a five-unit building on Telegraph Hill about 15 years ago. It took them five years (and a bunch of money) to be able to have an apartment in their own building, then another five to finally have the bachelor who lived in the penthouse decide to move out on his own so they could occupy that space. Oh, and thanks to rent control, landlords in SF can only raise rents 60% of what they should be based on market conditons. I guess the only thing that tickles me about our friends predicament is that they are Raving Lberals who have gotten a taste of their own medicine!
But here is a guy who has had three decades to get his act together and buy his own place.
Exactly.
How did it hurt this guy?
It didn’t.
He can now move to Crockett.
If a renter can find a two bedroom apartment with no garage or basement in the counties around Gay Frisco, the rents will be around $3000 per month.
Besides a good credit rating, renters need a monthly income from 2.5 to 3.5 times the monthly rent and an excellent credit rating to even be considered as renters.
He’s not “screwed” at all - he got decades of below-market rent for a rather large place by SF rental standards, in Duboce park which is a highly desirable “hip” neighborhood.
He could find a similarly cheap place out in the East Bay somewhere, and if its about art anywhere will do I would think.
There is all the rest of Northern California. Eureka maybe, its cheap there.
The reason that starving artists went to SF in his day was because traditional businesses and old residents were moving out of town, and SF (large parts of it) was cheap. Its not cheap now, somewhere else is.
Nope, not for me.
Government controlled prices or rents lead to increases in quantity demanded and reduction in quantity supplied and quality of supply, both of which lead to shortages and hatred between buyer and seller and chaos in distribution.
I know an elderly widow lady who has to try to survive on a tiny Social Security check and who has to pay $500.00 a month rent in an apartment project that is supposed to charge rent according to your income. Most of the tenants are welfare queens on ‘section 8’ where they pay as little as $120.00 a month or less.
This is disgusting.
>> Rent control might help poor people temporarily, but because they don’t own the place they are screwed in the long-term.
That makes a lot of sense. Not.
BI - Business Idiots.