On October 1, the largest rent increase in ten years went into effect in New York City. In June, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to allow increases of 3.25 percent for one-year leases and 5 percent for two-year leases. Tenants were unhappy, as many had called for a rent freeze. In a written statement,…
An Amendment in St. Paul When voters approved one of the nation’s most draconian rent control laws, developers in St. Paul reacted exactly as had been predicted: they halted housing projects. In September, the St. Paul City Council amended the rent control ordinance to exempt properties less than twenty years old. This returns a smidgen…
I previously wrote that in 2024 voters in Los Angeles will decide whether the city should force hotel owners to rent vacant rooms to homeless people. This, the advocates of the initiative want us to believe, is the solution to homelessness in Los Angeles. If that is true, why delay the solution for more than…
Last November, voters in St. Paul approved a measure to impose rent control on housing producers. The law went into effect on May 1, and the results are precisely what should have been expected. In March, before the law was in effect, building permits for multi-family housing were down 80 percent from November 2021 to…
Government officials in North Las Vegas have come up with a unique solution for homelessness: kick people out of their home and then bulldoze the house. A Nevada non-profit, New Leaf Community, purchased land and erected fifty square foot structures. The tiny houses had a window and locking door. The houses allowed homeless individuals some…
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced funding of $113 million for the Family Self-Sufficiency program. The program is a part of HUD’s “economic justice” agenda. When she announced the program, HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said, We’re looking at everything through a lens of equity and how we address systemic racism….
In a stunning, though not surprising, display of the Progressive framework in action, a coalition of more than 220 housing activists has called for Biden to enact national rent control. They encouraged the President to “regulate rent through every available authority” as a part of the Administration’s efforts to reduce inflation. The coalition wants the…
To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, try to control those who can.” Cea Weaver, a housing activists at New York’s Housing Justice for All is a prime example. Weaver has been a leading voice for tenant “protections” in New York, including a “rent stabilization” law—a euphemism for price controls—passed…
In 2024, voter in Los Angeles will vote on an initiative that would force hotel operators to rent vacant rooms to the city’s homeless. Despite what voters might think, force isn’t the solution to the city’s homeless problem. California has long allowed voters to dictate how property owners can use their property. As a result,…
For years, tenants and housing activists have complained that there is a housing shortage and that “the rent is too damn high.” While failing to tell us what rent would not be “too damn high,” they trot out a variety of proposals which do virtually nothing to increase the housing supply. According to the National…
The New York Times reports that many landlords in New York City are significantly raising rents—50 percent of more in many cases. They are trying to recoup losses suffered during the first two years of the pandemic. During that period, they had slashed rents to fill vacant properties. Renters are now paying the price for…
In the few months since St. Paul’s draconian rent control law went into effect, landlords, tenants, government officials, and housing activists have all expressed displeasure and confusion with the ordinance. The latest confusion revolves around the process to appeal for a rent increase greater than that allowed by law. And it illustrates the subjective nature…