Biden to call for 5% cap on annual rent increases, as he tries to show plans to tame inflation
Biden to call for 5% cap on annual rent increases, as he tries to show plans to tame inflation
President Joe Biden is ready to propose a 5% cap on annual rent increases for tenants of major landlords.
we have several lifetimes worth of policies to change to fix the mess we are in. this is exactly what Biden should be doing, passing policy after policy in the next few months that have obvious positive results for the common voter. he's not gonna run out of stuff to do if he's re-elected, so he needs to stop holding onto this shit like it's his last wild card of all time.
Where I live we've had a 4% cap for a long time. It just means tenants get evicted to increase the price. It's illegal, but the procedure to after landlords cheating the system is so grueling and adversarial, it puts justice beyond the reach of many victims. I can only imagine this being even worse in the US.
A sensible, too-little-too-late rule, probably full of carveouts and exceptions, that I nonetheless feel really relieved to see. Delayed and watery regulation is better than none, I suppose.
I suppose he has to do something to signal to voters that he's going to try to fix the housing affordability crisis, but this is pretty meaningless. But, what can he say? The truth? That the housing crisis is an extremely complex problem that will take decades to fix? Probably not going to go over very well.
In my province the cap for increase was usually around 1.5 - 2% for existing tenants/renewing lease.
The conservative gov went ahead and fucked everything up and said this doesn't apply to anything built after 2005, or new builds - that means any new anything in an existing building.
New basement rooms? No cap. (No cap) But, if the basement had rooms 35 years ago, and you 'build' "new" rooms, it isn't new and falls under the older more tenant friendly laws.
However, between tenants, a landlord can do whatever the fuck they want to prices.
Shitty rooms went from 375 to 700 I'm 5 years.
I'm sure this comes with a guaranteed 5% increase to minimum wages at the same time right? ... right? Any amount of minimum wage increase from the last increase 15 years ago?
Timely.
Oh neat, now if you can't afford rent (the issue) next year it will only be 5% more out of reach.
"politician expected to say that something we would want to should be a thing"
why is this news?
This shit never works out as simply as you expect it to. With any public policy change there are layers and nuance. If you restrict rent increases then every year you're gonna see the majority of landlords including the ones who do not increase rent yearly suddenly change course to always up the rent 5% per year, every year. Otherwise as a member of the ownership class who doesn't increase rent your are losing out on equity compared to those who do. Compound interest never catches up.
If you want to make renting profitable and homeownership obtainable for nearly everyone you need to setup a system where renters gain a share of ownership proportional to the money they put in. Make it so ALL renters eventually own the place they rent if they stay long enough. Ownership increases for every dollar spent towards rent. Evaporate the double dip appreciation for landlords and punish the income so that you gain money but at a slower rate than an index fund.
You also need subsidized lending for individuals who own no home. Possibly make it so 100% of rental income tax goes into a fund that provides mortgages to someone purchasing a primary residence when they do not own any current properties or are selling their primary residence to purchase another one (e.g. moving, not hoarding housing.) Make the application process for these mortgages prioritize families without any owned homes in their direct lineage (e.g. those with parents and children which do not own homes get a higher priority than the kids of wealthy homeowners.)
Something like this can bring homeownership to the masses and bring prices down as investment income from housing is no longer as valuable as other investments. Prices may still stay high, but subsidized mortgages would keep monthly payments affordable for those who qualify while minimizing profitability for hoarders.
Finally if you are still in love with rent control, then do it concurrently with a program like the above. Balance the scales.
Not better to cap it at 5% of the property value?
God this is embarrassingly lame.
I thought it was $55?
So if we can elect like, any old fuck now, can't we just go even older and elect the corpse of mao or something? cause that's kinda the only way I see rent, and rent specifically, becoming a non-issue in the near future. This is like one of the main issues which is directly symptomatic of capitalism, and which keeps capitalism as a system directly propped up. I don't really see any long term solution to it that doesn't involve a lot of no longer having capitalism. Other capitalist countries still have this problem. It's only like, china and the former soviet union and apparently barcelona with superblocks which are still gonna be subject to market demands and rates, it's only those countries which are going to be constructing such an excess of housing that a good amount of it can remain empty, which is also the case here as well but with the caveat that we still have massive amounts of homelessness and the empty housing is basically just to increase demand on top of straight up not having enough housing even were we to construct mass housing projects.
I dunno, this is a pretty good encapsulation of why we are specifically incredibly fucked and how this incrementalism isn't going to work at all to address our current issues. We're cooked, lads. Get the titanic band to start playing the song or whatever.
Weird, I just bought a house and to be on the safe side I consulted with a real estate lawyer before signing the purchase agreement. I plan to rent it out for a couple of years before moving into it myself, and the lawyer offered me a copy of his standard rental lease agreement. The lease called for an automatic annual renewal with a 5% increase in rent, and I was shocked because in 30 years of renting I've never been hit with an increase anywhere near that (almost every renewal I've ever agreed to was at the same rent). It's weird to think of increases even larger than that, such that a 5% cap would be beneficial.
Biden should eliminate density restrictions in zoning if he wants to help with the housing crisis. Making housing less profitable is going to help for about 6 months then make things worse.