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How the Rich Get Richer, Rental Edition
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/us/san-francisco-rent-control-and-unintended-consequences.html
Thousands of people are expected to become rich in the latest Bay Area tech boom, and in San Francisco these newly minted millionaires will receive a benefit originally meant to help the poor and working class: rent control.
Not that they have a choice. The law applies to rental apartments built before June 1979, regardless of the tenant’s income. Rent increases are limited to less than inflation — last year the increase was 0.1 percent, an all-time low.
But with an estimated 30 percent of the city’s rental properties owned by mom-and-pop investors with four units or less, an unintended consequence of rent control is becoming more prevalent: people of relatively modest means subsidizing the housing of the extraordinarily wealthy.
Critics say it is just the latest failure of the city’s housing policies.
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And :
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No, rent control does not work — it actually benefits the rich and hurts the poor
http://www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-it-actually-increases-rent-prices-for-most-people-2015-9
About 10 years ago, I worked at a glossy magazine in Midtown New York which employed a famous author as one of its senior writers. He came into the office one day, beaming from ear-to-ear. He had just signed an agreement to move into a rent-controlled apartment.
. . . . Skip Some . . . .
It then struck me that none of the people I knew in New York who lived in rent-controlled apartments were poor. (I'm using the term "rent-controlled" to include "rent-stabilized," which is a similar but less extreme New York City policy.) They were simply people who knew someone (who knew someone) who hooked them up with a sweet deal.
I didn't know it at the time, but this is actually a well-known phenomenon among economists, on both the left and right:
Rent control doesn't work. It doesn't help the poor. It helps the rich. (Or at least, the not-poor.)
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(Both articles do continue. Zim.)
Mad Poet Strikes Again.
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