Issues of Expanding Rent Control in San Jose

郭崇亮-102142  09/28   6547  
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Issues of Expanding Rent Control in San Jose

Key Points:

  1. Even with its good intention, rent Control is not the right approach. In fact, it hurts renters more in long term.It has not worked in any city it was ever adopted in, such as SF, Richmond, Massachusetts, etc. San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Monica as examples of cities that tried to impose controls on the rental market and now are among the highest-priced in the state.
  • Here is the link to express how rent control drives out affordable housing in Massachusetts:https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-274.html%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNG42cbw6j7qYN_mDInxPauz5ezKSg&sa=D&ust=1443462908844000&usg=AFQjCNFOXooHpySdj71jNexRDfqJ4ysBZg" style="text-decoration: inherit;">http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-274.html
  • Richmond: News: Today, CAA, on behalf of thousands of local property owners and concerned citizens, submitted 7,025 signatures to Richmond’s city clerk. The referendum asks voters to repeal a rent control and just-cause-for-eviction ordinance approved by the City Council on Aug. 5. The referendum also postpones implementation of the ordinance, which had been scheduled for Friday, Sept. 4. The City Council can now either repeal the ordinance or send the issue to voters. If the council chooses the latter, the referendum will appear on the next municipal election, currently scheduled for the November 2016 ballot.
  • San Mateo: An emergency just-cause-for-eviction ordinance is off hte table in San Mateo — at least for now. The San Mateo City Council decided not to take up a just-cause-eviction emergency ordinance on Sept. 21. Such a policy hinders a landlord’s ability to rid communities of dangerous tenants, such as suspected drug dealers.
  1. Rent Control will not address the root cause of rent increase, the conflict between shortage of housing inventory and growing job market; it will not create more housing especially if new housing is subject to rent control.
  2. Basically supply and demand are the core of problem for housing, but Rent Control is  only suppressing the supply side, not involving demand side at all. Imaging low rent in San Jose will attract thousands of newcomers to the city, which will seriously impact the current tenant residence in San Jose. But by the magic of free market economy, supply side will catch to meet the demand side, just a bit lagging. That will be the solution.
  3. Rent Control will discourage rental property owners from maintaining their properties - lead to a lack of incentives and lack of fund for landlords to maintain or improve their rental units.
  4. The City Council should  include  rental property owners in discussions to develop programs and incentives to help renters.
  5. The City Council should focus on creating more housing opportunities in San Jose to address systematic housing problem- NOT expanding rent control.
  6. The current rent data is skewed by the new luxury apartment charges. City should collect a lot data from majority small landlords: landlords didn’t increase much rent for good tenants. Rent control will forcelandlords to increase rent no matter what because they are afraid they don’t have much chance to increase any more. It will affect good tenants who may be able to enjoy low rent. Look at all the facts and data before making a serious decision.
  7. If the rent control is tightened, it will force some small rental property owners to take the rental units off the market and reduce the available rental units on the market. Then event the price will be controlled low, but even fewer available units. More people have no place to live.
  8. Rent control will not benefit the low-income peoplein the long run. It will make them even harder to find the available housing for two reasons. 1) the number of rental units under rent control will be getting smaller; 2) Some tenants will stay in the rent controlled unit even though it does not fit them anymore.
  9. Expanding rent control will make landlord increase maximum rent or terminate rent agreement no matter what before the policy becomes effective since they won't have chance to do so after then.
  10. San Jose city should enforce the Rental Rights and Referrals program instead of making another "just cause eviction”.
  11. The just-cause-eviction policy hinders the landlord’s ability to rid communities of dangerous tenants, such as suspected drug dealers.
  12. Just-cause-eviction will make the landlord be extremely careful to select tenants.
    it will be even harder for tenants to find places to live. No one dares to take any risk.
  13. The just-cause-eviction policy would encourage a tenant to find any possible reason to challenge the landlord, no matter whether the reason is reasonable or not. Many lawsuits would be unnecessarily brought up, and this would incur a huge waste of the legal system resource, and put a big financial burden to landlords. Once those things happened to a landlord, the landlord would really consent this system, may withdraw from the rental business. After a while, tenants won't be able to find places to rent anymore.
  14. High Administrative Costs: Due to the fact that rent control is government based, the local government must establish systems which handle the process of determining costs (and dealing with complaints). This adds additional expenses, which must be covered by taxes.
  15. Decrease Income Tax Revenue: In many situations, rent control can lead to a decrease in income tax collected from landlords for their rental properties. This occurs because it reduces the profit taken in from landlords by a considerable margin, leading a lower overall income.
  16. Decrease Property Tax Revenue: Rent control can lead to a decrease in property taxes. This occurs because rent control leads to a higher percentage of depressed and abandoned properties. Overtime this leads to a lower average property value in the controlled area, which reduces property taxes.
  17. Higher Entry Costs: When rent control affects the availability of properties, this can lead to an added expense for leasing a rental property (and signing a lease agreement). In many areas where rent controls are used extensively, it becomes necessary for those interested in renting a property to pay what is known as a finder’s fee. This can often outweigh the savings, which may be experienced by renting in a rent controlled area.
  18. No one can deny that we do not have enough housing to meet demand. The only way we can address housing affordability is to make more housing available and support the construction of more housing for families of all income levels. Stricter regulations won’t solve our problems. I urge you to focus on meaningful solutions that will keep our economy strong, our communities safe, and provide quality housing opportunities. I really urge you to say NO to the just-cause-eviction.
  19. Rent control is a means of manipulating the basic economic laws of supply and demand, which would determine the cost of rent in a city without any form of rent control. Instead of allowing tenants to offer what they're willing to pay for an apartment, and allowing landlords to accept the highest bids, rent control sets the price of an apartment based on its past pricing. Besides making the rental industries of cities with rent control difficult to compare to those without it, this also creates a lucrative black market for unauthorized subleasing. Since landlords are allowed to increase rent beyond the annual rate when a tenant moves out; some tenants with low rent choose to defraud landlords by subleasing to another tenant who doesn't sign a lease agreement and pays the lower rent in the original tenant's name.
  20. Rent control is unfair to landlords, who aren't allowed to raise rent in accordance with the increases in the cost of maintenance, property taxes or other operating expenses. Rent control is unfair to tenants whose rental units don't qualify.
  21. Rent Control will make most small landlords suffer from financial situation: they worked hard, saved hard money, and bought the house at hard time, offered free rent during hard time, by riskily investing housing market. Rent Control is taking away their opportunities to get return from housing investment.
  22. This is land of free. We Immigrants are drawn to this great land because of its free and respect of individual’s property right. Rent Control breaks the free market.
  23. In brief, rent controls distort market signals, and thus resources are misallocated: Too few resources are allocated to rental housing, and too many to alternative uses. Ironically, although rent control are often legislated to lessen the effects of perceived shortages, controls in fact are a primary cause of shortages. For that reason, most American cities have abandoned rent controls or are gradually phasing them out..

Experts’ opinion about Rent Control:

  • The disadvantages of Rent Control:

https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://ohmyapt.apartmentratings.com/the-disadvantages-of-rent-control.html%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNHjRPlNAu81I0b87QpGOWBt_8S7Xg&sa=D&ust=1443462908847000&usg=AFQjCNHyHeai6bUR3Qgd1WSMa9w2kp8Mog" style="text-decoration: inherit;">http://ohmyapt.apartmentratings.com/the-disadvantages-of-rent-control.html

Case Study:

https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/us/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-rent-control-challenge.html?_r%253D0%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNHTVD1_-77mNJRAt4X737_9ygPmFQ&sa=D&ust=1443462908848000&usg=AFQjCNHbeZu__RkQfD99ERxlbFB_-q-xeA" style="text-decoration: inherit;">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/us/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-rent-control-challenge.html?_r=0

The case attracted widespread attention, particularly from libertarian groups questioning what they called government interference in the marketplace. They said the city’s rent regulations were not only unconstitutional but also counterproductive. “Rent controls make things worse, not better,” said R. S. Radford, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which says it supports limited government and property rights and which filedhttps://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/11-496-Pacific-Legal-Foundation-Cert-Amicus.pdf%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNErTa6uQFfpgAu1JUQ6GC0tv4nzYA&sa=D&ust=1443462908849000&usg=AFQjCNESjYe_yNGy2Q9ZeiKQGEf9X5Rz-w" style="text-decoration: inherit;"> a brief supporting the Harmons. “Squeezing landlords actually creates shortages by discouraging people from getting into the rental business,” Mr. Radford said. “It’s as if the city’s firefighters showed up at a burning house with gasoline instead of water.”

https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_28816160/san-jose-affordable-housing-law-headed-u-s?source%253Dfacebook%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNFH3ZKMsMjRmvJ_xye4vsJAT9rLFw&sa=D&ust=1443462908850000&usg=AFQjCNHEUcyHiVNqnJ_79qXcmiRMeQ2WiA" style="text-decoration: inherit;">http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_28816160/san-jose-affordable-housing-law-headed-u-s?source=facebook

lawyers for the industry argue that San Jose's law and others like it across California violate federal constitutional protections against the "taking" of private property. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative Sacramento group representing the industry, has taken its fight to the nation's high court.

https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://www.mv-voice.com/news/2015/09/18/council-faces-tough-decisions-on-rent-control-requests%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNETe_Tl807Z1nqWzI7rUO6TdP3VpA&sa=D&ust=1443462908850000&usg=AFQjCNGXHGOfrzLfXNCEYTy7hjaUpAduyA" style="text-decoration: inherit;">http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2015/09/18/council-faces-tough-decisions-on-rent-control-requests

Any form of rent control would ultimately backfire and bring higher rental costs to Mountain View, said Joshua Howard, senior vice president of the California Apartment Association, a trade organization representing owners, developers and property managers. He pointed to San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Monica as examples of cities that tried to impose controls on the rental market and now are among the highest-priced in the state.

Property owners often became the scapegoat for high rental prices, Howard said, but federal and state investment in affordable housing development has been severely cut in recent years. A better local plan would be for Mountain View to provide more subsidies for low-income rentals and apartment upgrades, perhaps with the help of a tax measure, he said.

"It's important that we shouldn't be trying to solve housing affordability on the backs of one industry," he said. "We need to look at broad-based solutions."

A 'rising tide': But plenty of critics say the private landlords bear no small amount of responsibility for profiting from the lack of housing supply. Too many property owners have recklessly notched up prices to the point where housing costs are completely out of sync with the lowest-paying jobs, said Juliet Brodie, director of the Stanford Community Law Clinic. That disconnect is fueling communities across the Bay Area to demand change, including the current outcry in Mountain View, she said.

"You can't have it both ways: low wages and high rent," Brodie said "There's absolutely a rising tide because communities are suffering acutely against unchecked market forces."

Nevertheless, a rent-control program may be too little, too late to provide relief for struggling families. Rent stabilization wouldn't spur a decrease in Mountain View's current high rental costs; instead it would restrict future increases. Councilman John Inks on Tuesday described how local property owners were calling him and warning that they could raise rents now if the city moved to limit future rent increases.

Voices from Landlords:

A landlord from San Jose:

Presentation Speech Draft 1

My name is **. I am a small fourplex owner is San Jose. I understand there is a rental issue, but I don’t think rent control is a good solution.
I was fresh out of boat 10+ years ago with $500 of my total belongings. I was a renter living from mobile home, fourplex, and apartment before, and I saved my money and became a small rental owner now. I love this land because she helps me to realize my American dream, that is, to provide an equal opportunity to each and every one who works hard.
I understand the problem and pain. It needs multiple sources to solve, from the city, the community, the employer wise. But the new rent control proposal request small property owner to take the full responsibility. I am willing to contribute to our community, but I don’t think it’s fair to have the small business owner to be the solo scape goat.

Presentation Speech Draft 2

I am **. I am a small property owner is San Jose, and I have a full time job as well. I understand there is a rental issue, but I don’t think the rent control/just course is a good solution.

I understand it’s not easy with increasing rent. One of my tenant works 80 hours per week to pay their bills and have a better life. I respect people like him, and they make our city better. I only increased him rent by $50 last year, which is way below the 8% cap and the market rent.

It’s not easy being a small property owner as well. I need to take care of the property to make sure it’s functional, and clean. Every once in a while, there are people dump stuff to my property. On one of the day in Xmas Eve, I was dealing with the sofa and mattress people dumped in my property, and I got a phone call from my sister asking me how I celebrate. I told her you couldn’t imagine what I have been enjoying… Every year the cost of utilities, tax, and repair goes up, with the new rent control cap, I can only repair the barely minimum, without any luxury to make it look better.

I don’t think people, including the tenant, the community or the city like to see run-down properties. I think the city should support the small property owners to make it cleaner, and better.

Presentation Speech Draft 3

My name is **. I am small fourplex owner in San Jose. I have another full time job as well.

I understand we have rental issue, but I don’t think just cause is the right solution.

Let me share with you my story. One of my tenants is a single mother with a 12 year old boy. Somehow her ex-husband, who has never been on lease, camps in the garage drinking, filled with junk, and pee over the wall. Other tenants complain that they just want a clean peaceful place after a full day of work. Some of them even started to think about moving out because this guy.

I asked her, and later him, to clean up. He said ok, and eventually he clean up after one month; unexpectedly, the next week, I noticed that the junk was back. This happened multiple times.

I talked to several lawyers, and they said this is not easy to have that tenant leave, with the current nuisance. If with just cause, I can predict this guy will put more junk here, and the garage is like big junk yard, and they drink or do all kinds of things. Meanwhile, other good hard working and clean tenants move out.

I don’t think anyone want this to happen. Everyone, including tenants, small property owners, and city members, want our neighborhood or community to be safer, cleaner, and better. Just-cause harms good tenants, and practically it doesn’t achieve the objective.

A landlord from San Jose:

Good evening Mayor and Councilmen, thanks for listening to

me tonight. I am a SJ resident and a property owner. In 1999, my husband and I landed in SF airport, all we carried with us is a dream. Without a job, it took us a few months until we finally find an apartment in San Jose. We fully understand the pain as a renters, since we used to be renters for years. We work very hard, sacrifice our life quality to save down payment. Investing in property, is the way we choose to save money for our kids’ education and retirement, so that we won’t rely on government welfare and become a burden to the community when we get old. Please help small property owner like me, to continue pursuing our dreams.

A landlord from San Jose:

My name is xxxx. I am owning and managing a few rental properties in San Jose for the last several years. Even though I have done a lot of rehabilitation to the property, I manage to give minimum rent raise to existing tenants.  I have a good relationship with the tenants. We work like a team to make the neighborhood getting better. The rent control amendment will jeopardize the tenant-landlord relationship and penalize the good-hearted landlords who are already at the low-end rents of the market. Most of these landlords are the papa or even grandpa individual landlords. The rent control tightening will further squeeze these people. However, the really high rent charges are from the newer luxury apartment complex owned by the corporations, which are exempt from the San Jose rent control! 

I am willing to be a part of the solution through the use of collaborative and voluntary measures, but strong against the rent control tightening! Rent control tightening further places the burden of a regional housing crisis on a small group of older property owners.

A suggestion to the solutions: In addition to building more affordable housing, San Jose might consider setting up a “rental-housing fund”. The rental-housing fund would help pay the difference between “market rents” and “affordable rents” for those tenants who really need it. If the tenant receives a rent increase they cannot afford, they would apply for some of the rental-housing fund proceeds to cover their rents.

Local taxpayers would pay for the fund and real estate developers could contribute to it, but who qualifies for rent subsidies and for how long are based on the renter income status. In this way, the help is given to the people who really in need and the cost of providing more affordable housing would be more evenly spread.

A rental fund like this addresses many concerns; (1) the tenant gets to stay in their home, (2) the landlord gets to raise their rents, (3) badly needed repairs to the property are made (4) property values are maintained (5) eliminates the need to pit tenants against landlords (5) evenly spreads the cost of the regional housing crisis instead of shifting the cost to a small group of property owners (6) creates more affordable housing.

A landlord from San Jose:

My name is Shining Red Star, an investor in San Jose city. The majority of my investment properties are in San Jose. My rent increase is very conservative to keep best tenants. I can provide all of my renting history to you if you need. I am maintaining very good relationship with my tenants like partners to work together to support this business and at the same time to provide tenants their housing needs.

I appreciate your hard work serving San Jose residence and San Jose investors to make San Jose a better city with a bright future.

But the recent Rent Control proposal is causing major concern for me and for everybody who wants to have a bright, competitive City of San Jose.

1) It will allow the current renter's lock down the rent properties even though they may not need that large any more. 2) It will block new tenants coming into San Jose city because there is no rent property available. Usually the new comers are the drivers to bring San Jose to a better place with their fresh air, fresh blood, innovative ideas and investments. We are not providing them a room to come in. 3) The rent control will damage the relationship between tenants and landlords. Landlords have to increase the rent every year to catch the train even for good tenants. Good tenants have to pay the toll for rent control. For example, I am not increasing rent each year and when I do I just increase minimum even less than the inflation rate. But if there is rent control, I have to change this in order not to get stuck with low rent. The tension escalated between tenants and landlords is man-made by this rent control. You have to be responsible for this. 4) The eviction-just-cause doesn't help good tenants at all because they don't need it. This provides a good way for anybody including drug dealers to challenge the eviction and increase the society cost. It is not productive at all. 5) We should allow free economy to play its role, let supply and demand adjust the rent and give new students, young people, investors room to come to work together to build San Jose to a modern city. 6) Think how we can make San Jose to be more attractive to investors, new comers. Think how we can make San Jose be more competitive. With a rent control, or without a rent control? 7) Without enough funds to maintain rent properties, it will turn San Jose city to slam streets and prevent the city from moving upwards. It will certainly damage the tenant's life quality and health. Also it will seriously demotivate investors continue to invest to San Jose city. Rent properties may be pulled out and be liquidated to home-owner's properties and San Jose will have much less rent properties available. 8) Rent control doesn't provide any additional rent units to meet the demands. It not only blocks new comers, but also demotivate the current tenants become home owners.

I believe all of us are trying to make San Jose a better place, everybody is on the same page for this. But we need to ignore our personal interest, forget reelection, seriously think what is the best for San Jose city from a long term. We need help, we need new comers, we need investors. If you can think in this way, you will be a great politician, not just working for votes by favoring one portion of people by damaging the potential of the city. I believe you are not.

A landlord in Richmond after Richmond implemented rent control:

Rent Contol: A Path to Sky Rocket Rent.

My tenant is moving back to the East Coast. His 750 square feet apartment in Richmond City has one bedroom and a den. It is vacant now. His rent was $1200 a month. Now I am asking for $1450.

Two months ago, I could only ask for $1250 because it was the market rent then. But not any more. There has been a double digit rent increase for vacant units in Richmond City in the last few months. The reason? The city council recently adopted a rent control ordinance.

The ordinance imposes more red tapes, more government fees on multiple family units. It limits rent increase and prohibits landlord from evicting a tenant without just cause. It effectively makes rental business risker and more expensive to do.

Proponents argue that rent control is necessary to protect tenants from excessive rent increases. But does it really benefit renters? Of cause not.

Rent control does nothing to improve housing quality nor reduce costs. It only makes new tenants subsidize for old tenants, adding a lot more costs in the process. In fact, rent control is a sure path to sky rocket rent.

With additional costs and risks under rent control, landlords have to increase rent to stay in business. Since landlords can only raise rent on vacant units which are exempted from local rent control by Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, they will price those units to cover all the extra expenses and a risk premium to compensate for rent ceiling and inability to reclaim a rental unit.

I bought my first rental property in Richmond City in 1991. Since then, I have experienced two bad real estate cycles. I lowered rents during both cycles. I also gave good tenants discount by keeping their rent the same year after year. But I won't do it any more. For if I do, I'll get stucked with a low rent base.

So, from now on, bear market or not, good tenant or bad, rent will only go up. New renters will pay more than what they would have paid without rent control. They will pay a great deal to subsidizing old tenants while also paying a premium for additional costs associate with rent control compliance.

As long term tenants stay put, there are fewer vacancies, rent will further go up.

You may say that at least old tenants get some low rent benefits. May be. But I don't think the benefit out weights the harms. You see, in order to get cheap rent, they have to stay in the same place for many years. As a result, they are deprived of home ownership and mobility. They would have a brighter financial future if they don't chain themselves to a fix address and a permanent renter status.

Finally, rent control deteriorates housing stocks. To prevent landlords from raising rent, the ordinance is designed to catch landlords by back dating base rent to July even though it won't take effect until December. Landlords who were caught with low rent will see their property value suffers. They won't be able or willing to spend money to maintain or upgrade those properties.

It is no wonder that housing is the least affordable in cities with long rent control history. Nearby cities such as Berkeley and San Francisco are prime examples.

In San Francisco, $3500 only pays one month rent for a small one bedroom apartment, and that is when you are lucky enough to beat the other applicants. The city's rent is the most expensive in the country.

I rented my unit easily. It is still a bargain as other landlords are asking more.

Gone are the good old days when rents are comparatively low and affordable in Richmond City. Vacancy will become more scarce. New renters will have to brace for ever higher rent and limited supplies. But do they understand that rent control is the culprit?

A Landlord From San Jose

My name is Dan and I am a landlord from San Jose who owns different types of renting properties in San Jose.  I bought those properties in 2011 when the house were in crashing status and rent situation was in very bad situation too. Some of the properties had been vacant for nearly half years before I found my first tenants. As a small landlord, I didn’t ask City to reimburse me because of the vacancy. What my family did was to work extremely hard from our other jobs to make up our lost from the housing investment.

Good luck to our family, the market of rent has been got better and better recently and we as landlords can much more easily find tenants. With increased property tax, utility bill, maintenance fee, mortgage, we can nearly break our investment even with increasing rent too. But in order to maintain good relationship with our good tenants, I can show you I didn’t increase the rent much at all all the way from 2011: only 10% in 5 years.

Our family is much afraid that we as a small landlord will face financial difficulties again if the expanding rent control in San Jose becomes effective: we can’t increase our rent when the rent market is good VS we have to offer good deal to attract tenants when the rent market is severe by lowering rent price, several free month rent, etc. With the rent control with just-cause-eviction, we may end up lose our investment.

We as small landlords are definitely not rich people. We worked extremely hard to earn the money to invest the houses in San Jose. Because of the expanding Rent control, our choices will be either withdrawing our rental properties from the market or selling our properties. We would feel sorry for our tenants not being able to provide living for them any more. And the economy of San Jose will have very negative impact because of a lot of selling properties on the market.

A Landlord From EPA:

  1. Landlords and tenants are not enemies, but business partners. When RC hurts landlords, it also hurts tenants in the long run
  2. The key to solve high rent problem is to increase inventory, but RC will lead to the opposite direction. When landlords are not willing to invest in the EPA rental market, builders have no motivation to build more apartments. Over time, the rental inventory will decrease, pushing the rent to be even higher, and hurting renters
  3. When the rent is low, landlords have no resources and motivation to maintain the house, and renters can't have a nice living place.
  4. Contrary to the believe that landlords are making tons of money, the current rental CAP rate is quite low, about 4%. New landlords can't even make even with the higher property prices.

A Landlord From Mountain View: a resident of Rex Manor on Sep 18, 2015 at 10:16 pm

I used to be sympathetic, now I'm just tired. I think the city council should do a poll. Call residents and ask if they would like to see rent control (or rent "stabilization") happen. I bet the majority will say no. The city council should not be bullied into legislation supported by a vocal minority. Of course people will show up to a city meeting if they think it might help them financially.

On the flip side, those of us who are not in favor are not able to go to the city meetings and speak because we will be vilified and labeled as insensitive or even racist.

Chris - I'm sorry, but your suggestion is just crazy. Maybe for a large corporation with many units it could work, but many landlords are people who own only 1 or 2 units. The income from their 1-2 units quite possible supports them in retirement. They are likely not wealthy. Why should a private owner of one property have to bother with all your silly reporting? What a hassle and what an unfair burden to place on someone.

You say: "Rent control doesn't make sense as long as there's the state Ellis Act that allows rental unit owners to evict and sell, which could reduce rental supply further."

Are you saying the Ellis Act is bad? Why? If I own the property, why should I not have the right to remove tenants and sell if that's what works for me financially? The tenants don't own the place, I do! I let them live there, I agree to maintain the property and keep it safe and habitable for them and in exchange they pay me money. They are free to leave when they choose, I am free to ask them to leave (with fair notice) when I want to. Why should tenants have the right to occupy a property indefinitely as if they were the homeowner?

I am a homeowner (not landlord) in Mountain View. One of these days I would like to retire and spend some years traveling around the world. I would plan to rent my house out for that time since I won't be needing it, but then I WOULD LIKE IT BACK when I'm ready to move back in.

This rent control debate happens in waves in Mountain View. Tech Industry heats up, rents rise, people start screaming for the city to "do something". Then tech crashes, rents go back to normal, even housing prices dip. It's a cycle people. I rented for most of my adult life before I purchased so been there done that. If you don't like it there are many wonderful places to live in America, (or Mexico, if that's your desire) that don't have a cyclical economy like the bay area. There's a good chance we're headed for a crash soon, so all of you peeps screaming for lower rents my get your wish.

Voice - All your writers and editors must be renters. You seem to use every opportunity to bring this topic up. Do you do the same in your Palo Alto and Menlo Park papers, or is Mountain View just the lucky ones?

Compain from Tenants: Posted by Jim Neal a resident of Old Mountain View on Sep 18, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Although I have been a renter since coming to California over 26 years ago, I am firmly against any type of rent control or "rent stabilization" measures because they are always counter productive.

From the article, one could conclude that only the "special interest" California Apartment Association spoke out against this, but I was there and spoke out against it as well.

I did a lot of research on the topic and provided the Council with a list of the top 20 most expensive cities to rent in, in the US. I spoke about how the list shows that 5 of the top 6 most expensive cities all have rent control (including San Francisco at #1, and San Jose) and that it would be 6 out of 6 if one of the cities has not repealed the rent control ordinance a year or two ago. The list that I gave the Council also provided all the links upon which my facts are based.

Like many people here, I am also struggling to remain here close to my friends, but that will not be possible in the long run. I will be retiring (if I am fortunate enough to keep my job) in about 13 years and at that point I am fairly certain that I will no longer be able to afford to live here so my wife and I are already making plans to move elsewhere at that time (no applause please) :)

With that being the case, why you ask would I of all people be against rent stabilization? The answer is that I have lived in San Francisco twice and neither time did rent control or rent stabilization lower or help with the rents there. When these measures are implemented, what usually happens is that rents spike immediately as the property owners try to compensate for the future revenues that they anticipate losing once the new mandated pricing structure takes effect. This is not out of greed (normally), this is to make sure that they can continue to pay for repairs, upgrades (some of which WILL be mandated by local, state, or federal regulations), unoccupied units and property taxes. They also derive an income that pays for their retirement or perhaps their children's education, medical expenses, etc.

In listening to some of the comments and stories, many of the people seemed to be under the mistaken impression that the City sets or lowers rent prices, or would be able to prevent evictions. A new ordinance might make evictions more difficult and prevent a few, but any owner that is losing money on a property will either sell it, or file for bankruptcy in which case the tenants are likely to be evicted anyway by whomever the new owner is.

Rent control or rent stabilization also locks people into the home or apartment they are currently renting, so if you have say a family of 10 living in a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment, they will never be able to move somewhere else because if they do, they will then pay a market rent which is much higher than the market rent would be without rent control. The reason for this is that rent controlled/stabilized areas have even less available units than before, and therefore competition is increased thereby driving up demand and prices.

Rent control/stabilization would also create increased costs to the city as a new bureaucracy would need to be put in place to handle landlord and tenant complaints or issues related to the new ordinance.

I do not want to be forced out of Mountain View, and if rent control/stabilization was the answer, I would be the first one in line to advocate for it. We are already sharing an rental with two people and so far we have been lucky to be able to remain, but if this policy is implemented, the resulting rent increase might be too much even for our combined incomes.

I suggested 3 possible solutions to the issue at the meeting:

1) Education. This is a high tech/med tech area and people need to pursue higher education in order to increase their earning potential and obtain jobs that allow them to pay the rents in this market

2) More and/or streamlined assistance programs for low and middle income renters that reduce the burden while people are obtaining the necessary education to survive in this area

3) Provide incentives for companies with higher paying jobs to hire unemployed/underemployed local residents.

Market based solutions always work better than command economy solutions. There once was a U.S. President that attempted to set wage and price controls .... his name was Richard Nixon. Is that really the model that we want to emulate?

Link to the Housing Department website with a list of the Advisory Meetings and other information regarding the City of San Jose Housing Department:

https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://mandrillapp.com/track/click/30054690/www.sanjoseca.gov?p%253DeyJzIjoiUEVqcjBUOHN5UXBzdTN6dzVfUmxMNFRWbms0IiwidiI6MSwicCI6IntcInVcIjozMDA1NDY5MCxcInZcIjoxLFwidXJsXCI6XCJodHRwOlxcXC9cXFwvd3d3LnNhbmpvc2VjYS5nb3ZcXFwvaW5kZXguYXNweD9uaWQ9NDc0NFwiLFwiaWRcIjpcIjFlZmUyZjdkNjliZDRiNDNhM2NkMGVlZDgzN2M0OGMwXCIsXCJ1cmxfaWRzXCI6W1wiZDRiMzEwNjM2ZTBkZTlkYTc1OWU2ZmI0NWNkNGY5MTRjMTJhNjdlYVwiXX0ifQ%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNHjtdlqX08OM6l7fAemdvVdppbUew&sa=D&ust=1443462908857000&usg=AFQjCNGjwEYnF__MAvMI_ekNTcN8zB5CbA" style="text-decoration: inherit;">http://www.sanjoseca.gov/index.aspx?nid=4744