Here’s a little more news from California, this time over a ballot measure that will install rent control.
The only honest assertion that proponents of a rent control initiative make in their campaign ads is the fact that rent is too high in California. But rent control will make things even worse. As it is, most developers will not do business in California. Why try to build a subdivision in Silicon Valley, where the permits may take 10-20 years to get approved, when they can go to Texas and get plans approved in 10-20 weeks? Why build anything in a state where at any moment another environmentalist organization can file a lawsuit that will take millions of dollars and several years to resolve?
I have a clear and simple philosophy in terms of anything to do with the Golden Shower State and its doings: California’s example in the “laboratory of the states” is where we learn precisely what not to do — i.e. when California does some thing or other, the best policy is to do the polar opposite.
Rent control is just the latest in a long, long line of stupid policies from the Left.
And yes, we all know (or should) that rent control eventually causes a shortage of housing — we’ve already seen that on Planet Manhattan — but hey; if California wants to compound their stupidity (e.g. as in the above, of making new home builds almost impossible) with still further stupidity (rent control of existing homes), why should the rest of the states with a cumulative IQ above room temperature not just sit back, point and giggle when the whole state blows up?
Sorry, I just had a vision of California blowing up cataclysmically. So please forgive me while I go off to that warm, wonderful place created by the prospect.
I have mixed feelings about the PRK doing things that will, inevitably, drive up the prices of existing housing.
Part of me hates it, because it makes more Kommiefornians move, and they end up in Texas (where I live now) or other places like Idaho where I might like to retire and start f***ing things and causing home prices to skyrocket because they’ve got a ton of cash from selling their home in the PRK.
Part of me says sure, go for it, because my octogenarian parents own a house in the Bay Area that they’ve owned since 1972, and the more home prices go up, the bigger my share of the price of that house when they shuffle off this mortal coil.
Luthor/Zorin 2024: Make SoCal Sink Again!
This creates problems rather than solve them
– harder to find apartments for renters – as more landlords get out of the business of buying and renting
– govt usually ends up with more say on who you can rent your property too
Do we have a free market or not?
I have to look at this more closely. The phrase for going out of the business of renting to ungrateful tenants is called Ellising, from the case, “Ellis versus some idiot government agency” (but I repeat myself). I think I saw something about this proposition not permitting the owner to be able to Ellis out of the business, which means you have to sell the place, and incurring the gains and the taxes doing that will give you.
Ideas this dumb can only come from academia and our permanently unaccountable political class (that incestuous relationship cannot end too soon). Worse, the require an economically illiterate electorate to actually get passed (which it will).
Rent/Mortgages are too high. The answer is more housing. It is just that simple. Colorado has undergone a massive amount of growth since we moved here almost 16 years ago. They can’t put houses up fast enough and still my place continues to go up in value. Unfortunately, much of this growth is from California and I suspect that stupidity like this is inevitable here as well.
Rent Control is not, by any means the LATEST in the long line of stupid Central Planning policies. It is so old hat that there simply is no excuse for believing it will do anything good.
Yet another fine example of “if California is doing it, it is probably wrong”
As a lifelong California resident, I approve this message.
If it weren’t for all my licenses being from California crooked agencies, I would have been gone long ago. My hands and eyesight won’t survive another round of sitting for the licenses in another state.
The only good things to come out of California that I can think of immediately is some of the music, Ghiradelli chocolate or however you spell it, Fruits and vegetables, and maybe a California King size bed. Oh and Reagan but even Dutch starts to fall short in expectations when his record is examined.