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OT Political: San Mateo City is voting on Rent Stabilization

Enderturtle

Enderturtle

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Hey for anyone registered to vote in San Mateo City we are voting for Rent Stabilization for the city. Its called Measure Q and its in the very back of your ballot. Im voting YES.


To summarize Measure Q:
  • Limit the percentage a landlord can raise rents for apartments 1995 or older.
    • Homes and Duplexes will not be affected at all.
  • Require just cause evictions, right now they can evict you for any reason.
  • Form a housing commission to regulate apartment owners by charging them an annual fee.

To be honest, im stepping down as vice president of this club because the rent is too crazy here. Literally everyone we talk to acknowledge the housing problem. This is the solution but the Apartment Associations dont want it because it limits their cash flow so they will do anything to stop it.

It is supported by the CITY DEPUTY MAYOR, 2 City planning commissioners, 1 City Sustainability commissioner, and multiple endorsements by other key political groups.

This City is standing up against big business and greedy landlords evicting the middle class and replacing us with tech company employees.

If you care about stopping the crazy rent And you live in San Mateo, vote YES on Measure Q.

More at www.YesonQsanmateo.com
 
Surprised some form of rent control isnt in every major city in the bay. While I dont support it on houses, which in SF if you convert your home with a separate in lawnit does, I fully support for multiunit buildings. However it wont make rent cheaper, it will limit the increases which might help stabilize things
 
It will not make rent cheaper which should be a positive aspect for people worried about rent control. But it NEEDS to be stabilized because middle class people are being squeezed out by insane rent increases. People are seeing 400-500 rent increases.

Imaging living in a 1 bedroom apartment where rent is already high and your landlord tells you starting next month your rent is increasing from 1,500 to 2,000. Dont like it? Get the hell out.

As far as I know, Alameda, San Mateo, and Burlingame are voting on Rent Control this year. I think Alameda will pass for sure but San Mateo is 50/50. Burlingame I think is a No.
 
Wow Burlingame too? I would think that would be a "higher end" city that wouldn't want it, but I guess if they limit it to just apartment buildings then it makes sense. And as many California ballots have shown, it doesn't apparently take that much to get something on the ballot.

But no, I get your argument, an argument I never see answered though is who the hell is paying these prices when they increase the rent? There are only so many high end jobs that can afford those prices. Section 8 housing vouchers can't be paying for them. I wonder why the dynamic of supply and demand hasn't stabilized, as it is the demand is still there even at exorbitant rates
 
What happens is 3 or 5 people end up living in a 1 bedroom apartment and they split the rent. Or you get people living paycheck to paycheck.

Thats how the supply gets used up. But the demand is so high.

Both I and my landlord knows that if I get evicted or leave, there would be 30 people waiting in line to live in my apartment.
 
I managed an apartment complex in San Mateo County for many years. I currently manage one in Walnut Creek (18 years total between the two.) I see on a daily basis the issues surrounding high rent in the Bay Area. I've talked to literally hundreds of people searching for apartments and unable to find an affordable one over the years. It's a huge problem in the Bay Area. San Francisco is on the edge of a crisis because rents are so high that teachers, hospital workers, etc can't afford to live there and they are having major shortages in these and other fields. A teacher making 55K a year can't afford $4000.00 rent a month and they don't want to commute from Pittsburgh to teach in the city on that salary.

But this is a perennial problem in this area of the country and unfortunately rent control is not the answer. It may be a short tern solution, but it will also end up causing more issues than it helps in the long run. It's pretty simple economics -- rent is driven by supply and demand. If demand is high two things happen -- rents are pushed upward, but also the supply expands over time. If there's profit available more and more units are built. Just look at Redwood City and Walnut Creek right now -- both cities I'm very familiar with. Both cities in the last 18 months or so have added over 3000 new units on the market -- the supply has expanded. Rent control inhibits (greatly) the expansion and building of new units. So over time the supply shrinks -- and rents have more pressure upward. Also, there's simply not enough units to go around and business and the community suffers as well.

Again -- it's a huge problem, but the solution isn't rent control. It's good policy by cities on encouraging more growth. What works is tax breaks to get more buildings built and at the same time requiring that new buildings (that received concessions) set aside 20% or so of their units for lower income families. That's a win-win. More supply, short term rent stabilization and the pressure on the market pushes to keep prices lower.

Two final notes -- everything's cyclical. During the recession apartment buildings experei9nced much greater vacancies. Up to 20 and 30% -- and rents did fall. In many cases, owners weren't making money and there was no new construction. No one was interested in helping owners who went bankrupt -- and that cycle has contributed to this. Second, and not as important, but something to keep in mind -- landlords are going to work very hard to make a profit. If controls are in place then they will spend less money on upgrades, etc. The rent may be cheaper, but the quality of life will be less as well.
 
Id like to see this post removed.

I come to this place to escape all the stupid political crap that is spewed at me.

No offense to anyone...but I don't give a shit if you are for or against rent control. But I do give a shit about BAR and I really don't want to hear about any political stuff here.
 
No disrespect but this is the "eutrophic" section of BAR where you can talk about off topic topics.

It was created for non aquarium posts.

In other words.....too bad. Dont like it? Dont open the thread.
 
Wow. For a post that starts out with "no disrespect" that was extremely disrespectful to Franko. I'm in agreement with Franko now -- even a non-Aquarium section should steer away from politics and hot button issues -- some people just can't help being assholes.
 
Is simple.

@Enderturtle posted in the title what he is going to talk about. If you don't want to read it, don't read it. Is there something forcing you to read his post?

It's not like he said "Look at this awesome coral!" in the title then waylaid you into a political discussion.

That said, politics are a touchy subject and most forums do frown on posting about it because sometimes it really polarizes the community. Even if it was posted to the lounge, some expect the lounge to be politics free and still roughly on topic. I never checked the byrules on the Eutrophic Zone but maybe something for the BOD to look into?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
On political discussion, I'm fine with political discourses as long as it is civil and meaningful, we have huge shortage of those these days.

For background, I've been a landlord for the most of the last decade. Yes I agree that the cost of housing right now is crazy but I don't believe rent control will do what you think it does.

It is very very difficult to get permit to develop a new apartment building anywhere. And if a city adopt rent control, it drive that possibility to almost 0. No investor would put money into project when they can only lose money (during down time) but can't recoup it during boom. A rent control will divide people into different set of the "have" and "have not", those who are lucky enough to secure a place to live before rent control come online.

Bay area in the last 5-6 years has gone through a huge recovery and with that a large influx of people from out of state. More than half of my current tenants recently moved from out of state. Housing market can't respond that rapidly and result in the rapid spike. There are a massive amount of new construction coming online and that should drive down rent in the next few years. In some places (like the city) rent is already dropping back down. Building more housing come with its own set of challenges : traffic, school shortage etc but that is a whole different topic.

P.S. teacher doesn't make as little as you think. This is the pay schedule for Fremont for roughly 8 months of work (my wife teaches there).
http://www.fremont.k12.ca.us/cms/lib04/CA01000848/Centricity/Domain/81/20150121141706948.pdf
 
iCon said:
It's in the lounge section, but I'll agree that most people probably don't want to discuss politics. That said, it was posted, and if you don't want to read/chat about a certain topic, don't open it and stay clear. Discussing regional politics shouldn't be offensive to anyone and conversations don't hurt. I found this article intriguing:

https://medium.com/@andersem/a-guy-...out-sf-housing-prices-bd61fd0e4ef9#.mc88oh6yz
Click to expand...
That is a super awesome article.. .and I'm going to diverge from the topic at hand slightly (i.e. rent control), and say I do not want San Francisco to become a mini-NYC, I don't want to see housing added at a mad pace just to keep up with the demand. Parking as it is is too sparse, doubly so when they changed rules on requiring 1 parking space per 3 units, to zero required. It takes forever to get anywhere in the city, the city has made things worse for auto-drivers by making many streets with one lane only for Muni, if you can drive on it at all.

And lastly, his picture of Dolores park is very misleading
1*aJmfLc-SJE91fC295uhkhg.jpeg

This does look nice and inviting doesn't it?


Well this is closer to reality
dolores_park_torbakhopper.jpg


roostertech said:
P.S. teacher doesn't make as little as you think. This is the pay schedule for Fremont for roughly 8 months of work (my wife teaches there).
http://www.fremont.k12.ca.us/cms/lib04/CA01000848/Centricity/Domain/81/20150121141706948.pdf
Click to expand...
Damn, that's better than my pay scale, which gets the same rate as her's does 5 years in, only difference is at 10 years that scale seems to freeze after 10 years, plus ours is not BA, it's a MA +25, 50, etc

That said, I don't think I would go down that road of "they only work 8 months out of the year", that is a huge fallacy of an argument lining up there as there are some jobs that do not work on the 40hr work week plan with 2 weeks of vacation a year... of course I'm biased in this regard.
 
Funny how people really don't think much about decreasing the demand side.
Everyone is always into growth-growth-growth like it is some religion.
Pruning is not always so bad.

Example: What if you simply eliminated all private cars from SF?
Various people and businesses would be forced to move out. Big net drop in demand.
Those left would likely see a nice quality of life increase.
Win-win, except for Mike of course. :)
 
Enderturtle said:
No disrespect but this is the "eutrophic" section of BAR where you can talk about off topic topics.

It was created for non aquarium posts.

In other words.....too bad. Dont like it? Dont open the thread.
Click to expand...

******
Yea that was disrespectful...but I'll let it pass as an awkward attempt at humor by Enderturtle.

So apparently you can post whatever you want in the Eutrophic zone? However all posts are on the front page and there is no identifying marker that indicates what section they are from. You want to send us your thoughts on Measure Q...fine. Just understand that I (and others most likely) are not interested in hearing what you or anyone else thinks about politics. I (and others most likely) are also not coming to BAR to hear you or anyone else muse about religion, abortion, gender identity, addiction or a whole host of other divisive issues that have nothing to do with aquarium/reef keeping.

However, I (and others most likely) really do want to hear what you think about LEDs vs T5 lighting, water chemistry, cyano bacteria, hair algae and a whole host of other topics that have everything to do with aquarium/reef keeping.
 
Franko said:
******
Yea that was disrespectful...but I'll let it pass as an awkward attempt at humor by Enderturtle.

So apparently you can post whatever you want in the Eutrophic zone? However all posts are on the front page and there is no identifying marker that indicates what section they are from. You want to send us your thoughts on Measure Q...fine. Just understand that I (and others most likely) are not interested in hearing what you or anyone else thinks about politics. I (and others most likely) are also not coming to BAR to hear you or anyone else muse about religion, abortion, gender identity, addiction or a whole host of other divisive issues that have nothing to do with aquarium/reef keeping.

However, I (and others most likely) really do want to hear what you think about LEDs vs T5 lighting, water chemistry, cyano bacteria, hair algae and a whole host of other topics that have everything to do with aquarium/reef keeping.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's noted on the front page where the topic falls under.

upload_2016-11-9_16-0-21.png


Quick screencap of the front page where there are a couple of indicators of which section it's in.
1) Title. Sometimes shorthand can be kind of confusing, but the OT is a good indicator. It's shorthand for off-topic. OT usually applies to all contents that do not pertain to the forum mainstream topic, i.e. reefing in general.
2) Section it's in. If you take a look at the line below the title, you'll see that it was posted by Enderturtle on Monday @ 7.24 A.M. in the Eutrophic Zone, which is a hyperlink. The link actually allows you to go specifically to that portion of the forum. If you click on the link, under the Eutrophic Zone header you can see that this portion of the forum is for off topic discussion.
 
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