"Lost vegas" video on economy

[dex]

Rent control in my area stems from one or two POed tenants dealing with one landlord who raised the rent too high once too often. Even now very few people make a very big difference in tenant activism. Lots of opportunities at the grass roots.

Are there enough tenants in Seattle to form a voting bloc?

Edit to add a link:

Tenants Union of Washington State

Learn from history:

The rent control period in New York has been marked by the lack of an "adequate supply of decent... housing".[8] Megan McArdle wrote in February 2009:[9]
"In times like this, it's easy to believe that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. But here's one of the things that basically everyone, left to right, agrees on: rent control is the surest way to destroy a city's housing stock short of aerial bombing, and one of the major culprits behind New York's painfully low vacancy rate. Rent control allows some people to stay in artificially cheap apartments, but only by forcing the people who would have rented them into some other, less desireable place. Those people bid up the price of the uncontrolled housing, so that you essentially end up with two housing markets, one with rents above the natural market price, and one with rents below it. There is no way to ensure that the deserving middle class folks you want to see stay in the city end up in the latter, and indeed, many of the owners of rent stabilized apartments were notorious for finding the richest tenants they could. Rich tenants rarely get behind on the rent, and move sooner than people who can just barely afford their below-market place."Meanwhile, the stabilized stock deteriorates, because, especially in inflationary times, it does not pay the landlords to maintain them beyond the barest minimum required by law. And no one wants to build any new housing except luxury units which will not be controlled."Then everyone wonders how come there are no houses for middle income people in the city."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York

I had a rent controlled apt in the Bronx - my sister got it and gave it to me I was paying 400 when the market was 1250 for the same apartment. Great for me not so much for others.

One of the reasons for the "Burning of the South Bronx" - see Jimmy Carter's photo there - was rent control. Landlords couldn't make money because they couldn't pass along costs so the buildings were tourched by junkies looking for copper or maybe by the landlord for the insurance.

http://spinbeat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/southbronx1977.jpg

 

[clifp]

I went to school in Berkeley and during that the time the city started ratching up its rent control rules. The decrease in the quality and availability of rental units was felt almost immediately and landlords responded in creative ways limiting the number of people that could occupy an apartment. Twenty odd years latter there is a noticable difference between the rental market in Berkeley and surrounded communities.
There is good article about the effects at the Cato institute

On the other hand the new law makes sense, and it seem entirely sensible that banks start collecting rents from foreclosed properties as soon as possible.

 

[Nords]

Issues like foreclosure evictions and rent control have hardly ever come up in the "rent vs own" threads!

 

[clifp]

Actually there are a lot of new twists to the rent vs own debate.

By exercising the implied put that comes bundled with your mortgage our infamous NY Times econ reporter got an extra 100K over renting.

Here is the calculations from Berkeley Econ prof. and the money quote

So Ed Andrews's adventures in real estate have lost him $46K in NYT stock that he sold to make his down payment--stock that would now be worth $14K...
He has now lived rent-free for the ten months since be stopped paying his mortgage--call that +$32K...
He paid essentially a market rent for the house via his mortgage payment but he got a tax shield worth $500 a month for 42 months--+$21K...
And he pumped $58K out in his home equity loan...
So by my count his adventure in real estate has enabled him and his wife to spend $97K more over the past five years and still arrive at the same asset position as if they had rented...

So being able to avoid immediate evictions, coupled with the ability to suck out money from your home via HELOC and life rent free really favors owning. Or to be more accurate not really owning but rather taking as big a mortgage as the banks let you get away with.

Of course for those of us with just assets and no income borrowing is very difficult now days.

 

[W2R]

So being able to avoid immediate evictions, coupled with the ability to suck out money from your home via HELOC and life rent free really favors owning. Or to be more accurate not really owning but rather taking as big a mortgage as the banks let you get away with.

Not paying one's mortgage is stealing, right? It is no less stealing if he is able to avoid eviction for a while.

I could get a lot more than $97K over five years if I didn't mind stealing. I could rob banks periodically.

Besides, his FICO is probably about zero by now, and robbing banks wouldn't even affect my FICO if I wasn't caught.

 

[clifp]

The woman reporter in the video is Laura Ling, sister of Lisa Ling who used to be with The View, National Geographic Channel and later CNN.

Laura Ling was "detained" in North Korea along with another woman for illegal entry and espionage back in March, 2009. They go on trial in June.

The one good thing you can say about North Korea is at least their legal system is quick only a few days for them to deliver a verdict and a sentence we wouldn't even get through the preliminary motions here.

Of course the sentence and fairness. leave something to be desired. 12 years of hard labor I found out two interesting things, Al Gore started the Currents TV network that Laura Ling worked for and her more famous (probably cause she is cuter) sister Lisa, did a TV special about North Korea recently. Needless to say it wasn't flattering portrayal.