Rent control has always been tied to inflation in DC. And I say this as someone who lives in a rent controlled apartment.

Need to get down there and protest this. Organize as many people as possible and let D.C. Rental Housing Commission Chief Judge Lisa Gregory know that the RENT IS ALREADY TOO DAMN HIGH

What is the basis for capping rent increases for pre-1976 dwellings? Is there something inherently different about building up through that year which distinguishes them from newly-built units?

Seems like the goal of the rent control law is to ensure that pre-1976 units rare come onto the market (by encouraging people to sit on their rent-stabilized units).

I feel like inflation + 2% is pretty fair. That’s a bit higher than some cities’ rent control caps but its not absurd. I live in a rent controlled apartment so it would be nice if it was lower, but I can live with 8.9%.

I think the idea is that as a general concept rent control can discourage new construction since it limits what can be charged.

Whereas for older buildings, they’re already built and the increase in value isn’t coming from the building owner themselves

Hey, as a tenant at the AVA Van Ness, a non-rent-controlled apartment, they'd love to take people here on subsidies if you cover what isn't covered here (no utilities). Their attitude here, regardless of how tenants pay, is to shake people by their ankles for every nickel and dime they can get. This is the best "luxury" Best Western hotel you can come to if you can bring your own furniture and don't mind paying $50 a month for Xfinity/Comcast that you don't even want. If the washing machines are broken, they'd like you to call the vendor yourself and put in the ticket because they're just too busy to deal with customer service -- an ever taller fortress is built so you can't get a hold of them in a timely manner and they shit on good vouchered residents, as well.

And all because of illegal price coordinating via software! Where are the arrests?

Boomers had voting power.

Just don't understand what's so consequential about a building being pre or post-1976, outside of the fact that the law defines the former as being subject to rental control, and the latter does not.

The rent control law was pasted in 1985 and they chose buildings currently 10 years or older. Why 10 years exactly? Who knows? Probably just a nice round number. And it doesn’t apply to new buildings for the reasons mentioned elsewhere but mostly to encourage new construction

The law was introduced in 1985 so they picked a date 10 years prior.

Personally, I think it should probably be a rolling date so that rent control applies to any building that’s over ~20 years old

Yeah, like... this is just a big scary number without the context of inflation and that other rents have gone up way higher. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be aghast at this.

I think it would be nice to gradually expand that date, at least on an experimental basis. Maybe set it at 35 years or something.

That’s a great idea.

Statewide rent stabilization in California is based on 15 years from the date the housing was placed into service, which usually means when the certificate of occupancy was issued. Local cities and counties generally have a similar 1970s date due to a statewide law prohibiting rent control on newer units.

Because many people are already spending a huge % of their income on housing and increasing that share will likely affect spending throughout the economy.

Rent control units are already significantly below market rate. This doesn't change that.

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It’s not. Rent control is detrimental to new housing development which further exacerbates our already in dismal housing crisis.

That’s why more effective rent control regimes only come into place after X number of years. To lessen the negative impact on new construction.

What really hinders building is our overly restrictive zoning and insane permitting processes.

At least 100% agree with the second paragraph.

Rent control is not detrimental to builders, only to owners of the buildings who can continue to control high rent with inferior products. If their building is going to go into disrepair or the amenities are inferior they don’t deserve to be part of the current market. I know with current rent control, rent prices can rise higher than the current inflationary raises through capital investments and that should continue.

> Rent control is not detrimental to builders

If you limit the profit developers can make, there's less incentive for them to build more housing. That's the primary downside to rent control.

edit: Not sure why this is being downvoted. You can be for rent control while also acknowledging its effect on limiting supply. Go try price controlling any other product and you'll get the same.

It’s going to roll soon.

Meh, you sound uninformed. DC is seeing negative rent growth. I know it’s a forbidden neighborhood but look at the pricing in NoMa compared to what this city is used to. And this is with 3-4 more buildings opening up this summer. More housing ftw

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I’m uninformed to cite an obscure antitrust lawsuit regarding rent increases nationally? Sure thing. You can just argue on the merits, but this is Reddit I suppose.

The data is very mixed on that, no conclusive study has shown that rent control on its own reduces housing starts. Not to mention that multifamily properties are rarely held from construction through the period when rent control schemes kick in (typically no sooner than 15 years). In fact, standard property development pro formas typically factor for a sale of the property at year 15. Not to mention that while rent control does increase the tenure of tenants (which is a good thing!), very few rent control schemes actually have vacancy control, meaning that when the units do change over, the units can reset to whatever price the landlord deems reasonable. Many rent control schemes even provide allowances for landlords to make upgrades and increase rent accordingly.

At best, "rent control" in the US can at best be called stabilization, and often allow for above market increases. For example, under California's rent stabilization policies, which allows for up to a 10% increase per year, rent stabilized tenants sometimes receive a higher increase in rent than comparable non-stabilized units.

No, there is a max they can increase. When a place goes vacant, you can charge 10% more than the last tenant, unless they were there more than 10 years in which case you can charge 20%. This is from the pamphlet on DHCD’s site.

Developer-owners are the exception. Most develop to sell immediately, or after 5-15 years. Their selling price is largely dictated by the cost of debt, land, labor, and materials, and projected NOI. Then of course, there are developers fees and market fluctuations. Of those factors, only NOI has any direct connection with rent control.

If rent control doesn't take effect until year 15-20, allows for inflationary increases + an additional x% buffer + and generally includes vacancy decontrol, which is basically every rent control/stabilization plan in the country, then there is functionally no connection with profitability to develop. Rents are unrestricted for years and minimally constrained with opportunities to increase infinitely in the future.

Rent control does have a strong connection with is developer/landlord fear mongering. What arguments like yours do is take developers at their own word rather than recognizing that they are inherently regulation averse entities that will always argue that anything that stops them from making the maximum possible profit isn't just bad for business, it's bad for society. There's some nuggets of truth there among the lies and as we do primarily rely on private market rate developers and landlords to produce and sell us housing, incentivising their profit motives can be useful. But we don't have to be rubes about it or let them walk all over us.

For those down voting me, if you're going to do that then you could at least tell me where I'm wrong. And don't bother citing the long debunked Berkeley studies.

35 years just means that rent stabilization only applies to older, likely outdated and lower quality units.

It currently only applies to units built before 1976.

Just want to reply to your edit. There is limited evidence that shows a direct effect on limiting supply. See the UMN study on Minneapolis Rent Stabilization.

https://www.cura.umn.edu/research/minneapolis-rent-stabilization-study

Additionally it's silly to say "price control any other product" when housing operates very differently from consumer goods. Housing is particularly unique due to it's fixed location, the lack of standardization (units can have significant differences) its status as a basic necessity, the barriers to entry for creating it, the local market effects, the cultural norms, and all of the factors around the financing of housing. The United States has had limited interventions in price ceilings that mostly relate to emergency situations, so most of what we have to go off of are functionally economic thought experiments where we set "all else equal" and even the most adherent followers of classical economics would tell you that models do not map accurately to the real world.

Here's a study to backup my assertions:

https://www.cura.umn.edu/research/minneapolis-rent-stabilization-study

Yes, which many in this thread believe isn't enough. 35 years would only add 12 years of units with the newest being in the late 80s. Every year, it would add a year more of units, but I would have to look at building permits issued by year to determine if that's even a significant number of units.

8.9%? That’s it?

The national average for CPI last year was 7.5%, nearly the same the year before, and that the national average. It’s more in HCOLareas like DC.

So while no one likes their rent going up, you can’t uncouple the cost of rent from the cost of maintaining that roof over your head.

I'm advocating for something based on the age of the unit instead of a hard date. 35 years is a suggestion to not be too disruptive when experimenting.

I understand what you're arguing, but 35 years is more generous than similar laws around the country, which typically use 15-20 years.

Sure. Whatever. I wasn't married to 35 years. I was advocating changing from 1975.

Would be great if salaries could also be made to follow that as well. 3% market adjustment here!

Are you a landlord or something? We don’t want higher rents while salaries remain stagnant lol

Flat-out not true. For rent controlled units, the max rent increase for a vacancy is 10%.

Heart goes out to all affected, but just think of all the starving GS-9s whose rents were raised by 25% by Equity, and think to yourself, there but for the grace of God and rent control go I

-signed, a new GS-10 who fled an Equity apartment to a postwar condo in Virginia

I understand the impulse that would link rent control with inflation. But incomes don't rise just because inflation does. Rent control should really be linked with median income instead. It's the relationship between rent and income that determines if a place is affordable, not the relationship between rent and inflation.

Not necessarily. They’ve basically met the market at this point, with the exception of some of the newer buildings that are vastly overcharging.

Are you talking about RealPage, or something else? There's a fascinating breakdown in curbed from a few weeks back, but I'd love to see more details elsewhere.

Given three propensities of this sub, I don't think you're gonna find a lot of upvotes, though.

https://www.curbed.com/2023/01/nyc-real-estate-covid-more-apartments-higher-rent.html

Yes but I didn’t know names, just half remembered the Washington Post article about the investigation. ProPublica does real good work.

> with the exception of some of the newer buildings that are vastly overcharging.

If their vacancy rate is low, they're not overcharging, they're charging exactly what the market will bear.

No, it's all because of DC Official Code § 42-3501.01 otherwise known as the Rental Housing Act of 1985.

The DC council created a specific formula governing the amount landlords can raise the rent in that law, and this is the number allowed this year via that formula. Pricing software has literally nothing to do with this at all.

Maybe the vacancy rate is low because of the overpriced rent? 🤔

I don't think you understand what a "low vacancy rate" means.

DC's class A vacancy rate is currently 5.7%, meaning 94.3% of class A (i.e. "luxury" apartments) are currently being rented. The national average for residential vacancy is 5.8% so DC is a slightly more competitive market.

So they determine that with dice or darts? Are you sure they don’t determine that with market rates?

So not only did you not read the article, you didn't even read the headline?

> D.C. Tenants in Rent-Controlled Units Could See as Much as 8.9 Percent Increases

It's literally just reporting what the legal maximum rent increase is this year according to DC's rent control laws. Again, pricing software or market rates have nothing to do with the maximum allowable increase, it's the same calculation every year since 1985, "CPI + 2% but no more than 10%."

Imagine trying to be so snarky while demonstrating such profound ignorance.

CPI includes housing.

Fair enough? It was a tangential outrage comment I threw out there, but it’s absolutely relevant. Monopolistic price fixing and artificial scarcity is occurring in the housing market and that is causing inflation (CPI increases if you prefer).