Sunday, September 1, 2019

Gavin Newsom logic: if we reduce how much money renters can make they'll build more apartments

Since few if any Democrats actually work for a living they don't understand how reality works.

California governor Newsom wants to cap how much renters can increase the rents they charge each year.

Which means that the value of rental properties will go down.  If Google moves a satellite office next to your apartment building your property won't be able to generate significantly more income.

Newsom, like all Democrats, lives in a world where property owners are all evil super rich monsters who jack up rents for absolutely no reason. He also believes that the amazingly burdensome California regulations for building doesn't discourage people from investing their money in new housing.

The problem, as pointed out by Stanford, is that rent control leads owners to cater to high end renters and leave the poor and the middle class out in the rain; literally.

The same leftists who are objecting to "gentrification" don't seem to realize that if you make it so that a person building a new apartment building is unlikely to make as much money as if he bought stocks or put his money in a bank then people won't invest in housing.  If the long term prospect for profits from renting is lousy it make sense to turn the apartment building into high priced condos and invest the money one makes from that elsewhere.

The real solution is to make it easier and cheaper to build new housing but that would entail reducing the power and wealth of government so that's never going to happen in California.

On the plus side as more and more middle class people leave Californians will either be uber rich Google drones who can afford the insanely expensive properties Newsom is encouraging  or exploited illegal immigrants who don't mind living in squalor.

Maybe that's what Newsom wants. To reestablish the old Feudal order with the ultra rich, like himself, exploiting the poor to ensure that his drink is sufficiently chilled and his lawn is properly groomed.

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