馃攳
How California Is Redefining Rent Control | WSJ - YouTube
Channel: unknown
[0]
- [Reporter] If you live
in New York your city
[2]
became unaffordable to rent in in 2004.
[5]
See this line?
[6]
That line is 30% of what you make.
[9]
Generally for rent it's advised
[10]
you don't spend past that
line, but if you live in Miami
[13]
you probably passed that line in 2001
[16]
and in Chicago in 2012.
[18]
Los Angeles has been plain
unaffordable since before 1979.
[23]
Rent is growing faster than the money
[25]
most people make to pay it.
[27]
Either wages have been relatively
stagnant like in Atlanta
[30]
so it's hard to keep up
[31]
or supply doesn't keep up
with demand like in Houston.
[34]
Until the last few years solutions
[36]
have remained pretty local.
[37]
San Francisco had its own
rent stabilization laws.
[40]
New york did, too, but
now to protect millions
[43]
from financial renter's ruin
California upped the stakes
[47]
and passed a state-wide cap
[48]
of 5% a year on rent increases
[51]
making it the second state behind Oregon
[53]
to tackle the problem on such a high scale
[56]
which begs the question,
if California could do it
[59]
and it actually works out
does that mean laws like it
[61]
could start popping up
all over the country?
[64]
- You can understand why it
would be an appealing solution
[67]
to that problem, and it's
essentially a costless solution
[70]
to policymakers 'cause it
doesn't cost the taxpayer
[73]
any direct money unlike subsidies
[76]
or other types of interventions.
[78]
Rent control is simply a policy, right?
[81]
While I think it's
understandable that policymakers
[84]
are increasingly looking
for creative solutions
[87]
and rent control is in some
ways an out of the box solution
[91]
we need to think more expansively.
[93]
- [Reporter] Across the country
[94]
that might mean protecting tenants
[95]
from eviction without just cause,
[97]
giving tenants the right to legal counsel,
[99]
or creating non-discrimination policies
[101]
against tenants using housing vouchers.
[104]
- Typically we don't actually have
[105]
what people think of
as rent control anymore
[108]
which is a strict price
ceiling that's inflexible.
[110]
Those started in the 1920s
and grew in popularity
[114]
after World War Two to
address the housing needs
[116]
of people coming back from the war,
[118]
but we learned very
quickly that flexibility
[121]
was important to succeed and make sure
[123]
that rent regulations weren't
actually making it harder
[126]
to build more housing and find housing.
[128]
Since the 1970s most rent regulations
[131]
are what we call rent stabilization.
[133]
The standard features would be
[135]
to have some sort of limit on
how much you can raise rent
[138]
while a tenant is living in the unit.
[140]
- [Reporter] Which is
exactly what we're seeing
[142]
in California's bill
capping rent increases
[144]
to 5% plus inflation.
[146]
The law also provides other
kinds of tenant protections
[149]
like requiring landlords to provide
[151]
a just cause when evicting tenants.
[154]
- Where we see growth is
in rent stabilization.
[157]
We don't see a lot of the
extreme cases of rent control
[160]
anymore, where they do
exist they're fading out.
[163]
So you can think of the
California and Oregon laws
[166]
as more anti-gouging laws than they are
[169]
traditional rent stabilization laws.
[171]
You can think of an anti-gouging law
[173]
as trying to curb the
worst excesses, right.
[176]
It is not intended to limit
normal rent increases,
[180]
but extraordinary rent increases
which may be driven by,
[184]
for example, gentrification pressures.
[186]
- [Reporter] That 5% cap in
California is meant to cover
[189]
those extraordinary rent hikes.
[191]
Nearly 30% of rentals in the Sacramento
[193]
and Riverside areas saw rent
hikes more than 5% in 2018.
[197]
And 12% of rentals in the Bay Area
[200]
saw rate increases larger
than allowed under the bill.
[203]
But rent stabilization has
more than a few critiques.
[206]
- With rent regulation
in general the debate
[208]
tends to devolve to one side arguing
[212]
that limiting price sends the
wrong signal to the markets.
[216]
It reduces incentives
for landlords to invest.
[219]
That I think was the
dominant view of economists
[221]
for many years although I think the debate
[223]
has moved beyond that simple perspective.
[225]
On the other side people
emphasize the imbalance
[228]
between landlords and tenants in terms
[230]
of when tenants can be evicted,
under what circumstances,
[233]
on what reasons, can have all sorts
[236]
of collateral consequences
for people's lives.
[238]
- [Reporter] Proponents of the bill argue
[239]
that those critiques get addressed
[241]
through exceptions in
the bill like exceptions
[243]
for small mom and pop land owners
[245]
or the bill expiring after 10 years
[247]
or exceptions for new buildings
to inspire new construction.
[251]
But experts are still skeptical
[253]
if something like this could
blanket apply to the country.
[256]
- But I don't think that
one size fits all solutions,
[259]
particularly a national rent control
[261]
is going to work across all markets.
[264]
We have essentially a mixed bag
[267]
and a lot of disagreement in the field.
[269]
And it's fairly novel
to have a state do this.
[272]
Before we move from state
to federal protections
[276]
we really need to see how it works
[278]
in places like California and Oregon.
[281]
It's hard enough to do
that at a city level.
[284]
We'll see how they can
accomplish it at the state level.
[286]
It seems next to impossible at this point
[289]
to do it at the national level.
[291]
- So if the question is,
what's the trajectory
[293]
of this policy, I don't think
we've seen it play out fully.
[296]
I think there's a lot of energy
[297]
from local government officials
and tenants themselves,
[300]
and I think that energy is
actually going to increase.
[302]
We're in a housing crisis
across the country.
[304]
Although rent regulation
and tenant protection
[307]
isn't the only solution to that crisis
[310]
I think there's a growing
recognition that this
[312]
is a policy area that's
garnering increasing support,
[315]
and the fact that you now
have statewide approaches,
[318]
and I think we're likely to see more
[319]
and we're now beginning
to see national proposals
[323]
I think means we're at the
beginning rather than the end
[325]
of the policy conversation.
Most Recent Videos:
You can go back to the homepage right here: Homepage