In SF rent control only applies to buildings that are like 40-50+ years old. Yet people still complain as if it stops new housing. If you combine this with the idea that rent control raises prices for everyone else, you'd think people would be knocking down the doors to build: artificially high rents for decades.
Central to the challenge of UBI and housing costs is the law of rent. UBI could work if all its redistribution was not immediately captured by landowners. There are ways to make that possible.
Rent controlled apartments being held by tenants no longer using them as primary residences is pretty common. A famous case of this was Cleve Jones in San Francisco who tried to make it a huge political deal when his landlord raised his rent to market because he was 1. living in Guerneville full time and 2. subletting the apartment. The media environment is one where it's ok for a master tenant to be a de facto landlord and make money on real estate, as long as it's not the landowner themselves!
>> UBI could work if all its redistribution was not immediately captured by landowners.
Doesnt this happen now because we're all so tethered to HCOL cities? With UBI presumably people would be geographically free, and there is a lot of inexpensive land and housing around the country. Doesnt the capture problem only happen due to scarcity in HCOL cities and thus not an issue?
Yes but it builds into my argument - it does not counter it. Reduced supply... increases rent. I'm saying "increased rents + rent control not applying = more people should want to build". And the person I'm replying to said rent control makes people not want to build.
> I'm saying "increased rents + rent control not applying = more people should want to build"
This is false. People will want to build more on the margin, but that doesn't mean they want to build. If the profitability requirement (hurdle rate for getting investment from institutions) is greater than the the market rent, people will not build even if market rent is high. Indeed, that's what's happened in the last 5 years as costs have increased much faster than rents.
Rent control also switches the class politics, as people who are paying far below market rate for housing become like landlords and homeowners: getting free imputed rent.
People have been knocking down doors to build in SF for decades, but do not because regulatory capture by homeowners, landlords, and those with below-market rents are happy to keep out new people.
Where and when housing gets built in the US is not merely a market driven decision: you also need to get local permission to build.
Rent control absolutely causes a reduction in supply: there's a reason rent controlled buildings have apartments in poor condition that owners do not renovate (so a reduction in quality supplied) and many are held off market or converted to owner occupancy through condos and TICs (so a reduction in quantity supplied). Not to mention the units underused by long term tenants who maintain them as secondary residences.