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.
Hello fellow Ontarians. I feel your pain. It may be little solace but know I bought a house with a basement tenant 3 years ago. Their rent was $1100 a month for a 1 bedroom 3 years ago and it’s 1100$ a month now. I don’t need the money. Fuck landholding pariahs taking advantage of renters.
That’s still way higher than anyone’s raises each year…
Raises have nothing to do with inflation or cost of living. Companies that pin raises to those things are severely underpaying employees and hoping they don’t seek greener pastures.
Market rates set compensation. The best way to know your market rate is to find a new job.
If the company is doing COLAs right then their employees wouldn’t need to seek greener pastures.
COLA is almost always lower than what you’ll get by job hopping
I didn’t say they were doing it right.
what the fuck? you get less than 5% raise in a year in the US?
edit: in light of responses, I’d like to reiterate, what the fuck… this is the most obscenely wealthy country in the world.
Yep, company loyalty is dead here. The only way to get a significant raise is to switch jobs.
i mean that’s what happens if you don’t give a raise. what a stupid market.
Acording to this report: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/eci.pdf
The average Wages and salaries increased 1.1 percent and benefit costs increased 1.1 percent from December 2023.
Oh and then people that did get raises averaged 4.4% last year. So its really raises for some and poverty for most.
People are lucky to get a raise at all. Much less 5%, usually it’s 1 or 2. For at least a decade the only way to significantly increase your pay has been to move jobs.
Most people are lucky to get 2%… my company set the max at 2.5 last year and you only got that if you were IT Jesus
Man this entire thread is just a perfect encapsulation of the perfect being the enemy of the good. What a bunch of useless chuds.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that phrase. Do you mind explaining what you mean? (Just to be clear, I’m not trying to be combative. I just have no idea how to read that)
In simple terms, the failure to do something absolutely perfectly shouldn’t stop you from doing something that will still be better than the status quo.
What if the act of doing something carries a cost with a negative expected return on investment?
…then the original saying doesn’t apply, does it? Is this some kind of “gotcha” I’m not understanding?
…then the original saying doesn’t apply, does it?
And that’s the million dollar question. I’m not arguing the perfect should be the enemy of the good. I’m questioning how much “good” I get by aligning myself with a fundamentally bad dude. Biden’s played this bait-and-switch game before, and there’s a real reason to believe 2025 Joe Biden won’t be willing or able to deliver on his 5% rent cap promise. In exchange, what is he asking you to give up?
An hour of your life in line to vote on election day? A small recurring donation to his campaign? A week block-walking your neighborhood to canvas for him? Three months volunteering to work for his reelection campaign?
Presidential elections aren’t cheap. I have to wonder what would happen if all the money and manpower pouring into Biden’s coffers was simply directed towards Habitat For Humanity instead. Would we get more bang for our bucks?
Dawg, I’m not even the OP. I was just explaining an idiom, and you expect me to answer a humanist philosophical question as if I’m the greatest thinker of our generation 😭
I can’t help you decide what extent you’re willing to compromise to vote Biden/democrats. I can’t even vote in the US.
that doesn’t sound very good to me
“Don’t make perfect the enemy of good” essentially says that it’s better to do what you can in the short term to reduce harm or make positive change than to wait for the perfect solution and do nothing in the meantime. The idea is that the good is still going to help some people while we wait for the perfect solution to the problem- which, crucially, may never come, or come too late for a whole bunch of people.
One example would be letting a parent having their kid eat fast food instead of a perfectly healthy diet because their parents live in a food desert; not ideal, but it’ll keep the kid fed and alive.
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We want actual change.
Not this half-assed thing of “oh shit Biden isn’t polling well. Quick, do something popular!”.
Seeing this honestly frustrates me more because we all know they could do better than this.
This guy really larps these this trust me bro jaja
What BS. This is like arguing that “trickle down economics” is good because money eventually trickles down to us plebs. We’re in a sinking boat filled with holes and you’re trying to argue that we should be happy that 1 of 1000 holes got patched up even though there isn’t time to patch the other 999 holes before the ship sinks because the crew would rather sit on their ass and drink martinis.
No this is like y’all getting mad at someone working on patching a hole because he’s not simultaneously patching every hole in the exact same instance. All why you sit there and don’t work on anything. Get a mallet get some wood get to work or shut up.
Cheap vodka comes in plastic bottles and landlords are faceless corporate entities on the other side of the country (if they’re in the country at all). So my ability to help is limited.
Except that you’re not in a sinking boat and you’re in the top 5% of the richest people in the world.
Interesting. We all have the same feeling about you. The sad part is that you might actually know something. Maybe you could say something constructive, if only you cared to do so.
You could have made an argument about how aiming for perfection is a bad strategy here. But you didn’t, so let me show how you’re wrong. The proposed solution doesn’t address the underlying problem, and it adds complexity. Rent can only go up by 5%, sure, but what happens if you sell the property you move into it or other exceptional circumstances happen? Then you can raise the price. Or perhaps you rent it through Airbnb, so the rules don’t apply either. It doesn’t really matter what the special cases are, because finance folk love complicated solutions. They’re always going to find ways to game the system at our expense.
But let’s suppose the 5% solution is somehow good. If it’s good for rent then it should be good for other things too, right? You can’t let electricity or gas prices go up faster, or people won’t be able to heat their homes. You can’t let food prices go up faster, or people won’t be able to eat. Oh, and you certainly need minimum wage to be going up 5%, for any of that to make sense.
So if we consider all of that, and we find the aforementioned proposal slightly lacking, maybe it’s not because we’re seeking perfection. Maybe it’s because you have no idea what problems we are trying to solve.
I stand corrected, this is the perfect encapsulation.
Also you are a disgrace to that username.
Lol it’s like you summoned the ancient spirit of not understanding incremental improvement, who then wrote a short essay to explain to you just how much they don’t understand the concept.
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.
But that might upset his owners, I mean campaign contributors.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
— some guy
He’s not a dictator. Most of those would never pass in the Senate.
It’s not about that. It’s about building momentum for the idea. If it passes great, if not then it’s out there. People know it’s possible and it will never stop haunting the elites who the government actually serves.
If only someone had given him the power to be a dictator!
Guess he just fuckin loses and the next guy does it anyways.
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Oh neat, now if you can’t afford rent (the issue) next year it will only be 5% more out of reach.
Treating the symptom.
Okay I guess. I’ll get excited when I see a plan to treat the disease.There’s no reason to get excited at all. Biden can call for it, but Congress has to write and pass the legislation. Republican House majority won’t let that happen.
Vote in November.
Not even. Can’t charge more for rent when it’s already max out against income. It’s a placebo that’ll have zero effect. Don’t get too excited about a “plan”. This is the plan.
What world are you living in when they can’t raise rates too high for your income level? Not the one the rest of us are living in.
The vast majority of individuals must be able to afford to house, feed, and cloth themselves, as well as travel to and from work. If not they will riot. This is bad for economic growth, the mandate of capitalism. It’s particularly bad when the market is still significantly inflated relative the economy.
It’ll never be written into law. However, Biden’s proposed rent caps under projected inflation, signifying rent has fully saturated its allocation of income. Housing began balancing systemically naturally, human sellers drying up. Landlords have no obstacles.
I live in a world of nuance. The rent sucks.
Historically that’s actually not what causes people to riot. The slow chipping away actually almost never causes riots. It’s the immediate stripping of a right or privilege. Look back at history that’s how it Works nearly every single time. You’re basically making the same argument people who you sanctions as a political tool make. That if you keep making life shittier and shittier and shittier slowly the people will riot. Doesn’t work.
Furthermore capitalism does not possess the capacity to change in that manner. It does not possess the capacity to adjust to the needs of the masses. Thinking capitalism will fix this is insane.
If you look at history, the last half century is far from “slow chipping away”.
The last half century of political sanctions? What does that even mean? I feel like you were trying to be clever and you lost the point somewhere. If you ever had one.
I responded to the part that wasn’t strawman with a response of equivalent quality, simple clarification of the point of disagreement.
Why do you expect more than you give?
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.
Why would someone buy a house so someone else could slowly buy it from them? They would essentially be acting like a bank.
Who keeps up with the house maintenance?
Landlords are unneeded middlemen. A good system doesn’t use them.
Your idea is “rent to own”.
You can rent to own a Playstation that’s 300 dollars for a small monthly price but at the end of the loan you’re going to pay 600 dollars total for the Playstation.
Why am I going to go to Best Buy, buy a Playstation for 300, then let Jimmy down the street play with it while he slowly pays me back my 300?
Why am going to buy a house for 100,000 and let Jimmy rent to own it?
600 a month for 15 years. He’d pay for it.
If I put 100k in the S&P500 for 15 years, I’d have 415k.
Would I rather:
A. Help Jimmy get a house
B. Make ~300k for just sitting
If you think landlords are bad you should see how much the bank makes.
My 500k 7.5% mortgage if I only paid the mandatory payment would end up costing me something like 1.6 million dollars. My PITI is something like 4k/mo and only like $500 is principal.
Edit:
Why would someone buy a house so someone else could slowly buy it from them?
Imagine if you can’t make your mortgage payment on a home that you will not be living in due to whatever personal reasons you have, so you want to pause payments. Instead of selling the home you choose to rent it out… barely losing equity thanks to the kind renters who take on the interest and tax payments for you so you don’t have to pay.
The renters are not getting a worse deal than buying and they get the benefit of having a home they are gaining equity in. The landlord is not losing the home they otherwise could not afford to keep given whatever factor is going on. (Parents need short term care? traveling? going to college for a year or two? just don’t want to work?) Bottom line, it’s far more equitable for everybody.
Anything that just rips away equity from those who currently have it is going to be wildly unpopular. In gaming terms, nobody likes nerfs, you need to buff the curve for people who do not have equity. If you are perceived as taking something away it is so hard to convince anybody that the change is for the better or needed.
What you’re saying
Say my mortgage is 1k a month.
I can’t afford 1k, so I let you move in and pay me “rent”
You pay me 1k each month.
After a year, I kick you out and move back in.
Where’d your 12k go?
Bank going to give 12k in cash to you and increase my mortgage by 12k?
So let’s say your mortgage is 1k/mo. We’re not talking PITI, just mortgage.
Let’s pretend the house is worth $30,000 and the landlord has $7200 in equity at the beginning of the lease (20%.)
Let’s also say of that mortgage 700 is interest and 300 is principal. So a renter pays you 1k/mo rent for 12 months. They get 300/mo principal totaling $3,600 after a year.
At this point there are a few different ways of handling it.
Option 1: The tenant is buying debt from the bank with the principal payments over the course of the year. So $3600 of the debt they now own, when you pay the bank the payments go proportionally to the tenant which actively reduces their equity, but they collect all the interest income for the share they own.
Option 2: You could have shares of the home. As money is paid in against principal the tenant gains share of the overall home - so in this case a bit over 10% over the course of the term. Since this is shares as the valuation of the home increases so do the share prices and the typical compound interest applies. This can be very messy because when you want to cash out the principal owner either need to buy you out by taking another mortgage or paying you, but it could be done.
When you factor in things like the appreciation of the home the first option gives the appreciation to the landlord without reducing their mortgage. They would gain in net worth because the home is worth more money, even though they still have a mortgage that hasn’t decreased in price.
The second option takes the equity gain away from the landlord proportional to shares owned. Although harder to track it’s still possible.
This is ignoring the real world scenario where the mortgage is really only $500/mo for a lot of long time landlords who bought 20+ years ago or refinanced in 2020 and the rent is $2000-3000+++ There would have to be something that takes into account excess paid beyond the mortgage/taxes. This also doesn’t make any sense at all if the house is paid off either since there would be only taxes, no mortgage. Obviously there would need to be some nuance in implementing a solution but it’s not impossible.
I like the idea of rent to own condos from the federal government. That removes the profit incentive and allows tenants to immediately form a council for their building to manage maintenance and such rather than having a landlord (or 10 who own single units in multiple buildings) run the building council.
It’s easy as pie too, federal government buys or builds, (doesn’t matter), then divides the cost by the number of units. That number is the magic number at which you own the condo free and clear. Divide the magic number by 30 and you have base rent that must be paid monthly. You can pay more if you want or you can just do the base plus fees set by the building council. If you need to move before 30 years then someone can buy you out of your unit by paying the amount you’ve already paid or more. Otherwise the government will buy you out and start the process over with the next tenant.
Build enough of these and we can drop an anchor into the housing market that naturally prevents things from going too high. After all why would I mortgage 800k when I can pay half that over 30 years with no interest?
If you want to make renting profitable
Why the fuck would anyone other than the leeches that feed off of the rest of society by putting a human right behind a pay wall want that?
You need to free your mind of the worm that is capitalism, an entirely artificial construct designed to keep you down, you’d be able to see a significantly brighter future then…
5% raise cap is lame! way lower than wage increases! a 1000$ rent after 5 years is 1300$, which after 5 years becomes a 30 % increase
Him and his filthy rich Democratic politicians are so disconnected from reality that this seems to them like a revolutionary policy
Here’s the thing, it provides at least some sort of predictability for tenant.
Nothing worse than settling into a place and getting booted because rent goes up 20% or 30%.
This will largely guarantee that rent goes up by 5% every year, but it will limit crazy jumps.
A year or so ago they surveyed the homeless in San Diego. Everyone assumed that the homeless population is largely from out of state, coming to SD to be warm while homeless. What they found was the complete opposite.
Most of the homeless do not have a drug problem or only started taking drugs after becoming homeless. Most homeless people were employed full time for the 12 months before they became homeless. Most homeless people in San Diego were born there and watched as the relentless march of 5-10% increases (California state maximums) slowly pushed them into homelessness.
Banal evil, is still evil.
The fear of a 30% rent hike has motivated several of my big decisions, and it happened once (luckily at a time where I could recover). But ya know, compounding interest - 5% every year is still exponential. Everyone’s pretty sure the world’s ending anyway.
Healthy markets also create predictability by constraining prices.
We’d have a healthy housing market if we stopped actively suppressing new housing construction.
We make some projects impossible and every project harder than it needs to be when it comes to constructing new housing. The government’s thumb is constantly pressing, pressing, pressing on the scale to keep supply lower than natural.
Hasn’t rent control been shown to be ineffective at making everyone play nice? I feel like it’s much more effective to put your finger on the supply/demand balance by subsidizing the supply side.
And not by just giving handouts to corporate landlords, either.
Hasn’t rent control been shown to be ineffective at making everyone play nice?
It’s proven effective at causing landlords to scream and cry and publish 10,000 word Op-Eds about how they’re going to do a capital strike if the rules aren’t changed.
But, when paired with new investment in public housing, its incredibly effective at keeping rental costs stable long term.
Just like with unions, you know it’s good for the common people, because the business and property owners speak out against it so strongly. If it’s pointless, they could just let it happen. But instead, they rally against it. So you know they’re lying when they say it won’t matter.
It will matter.
Yeah. It has but stuff like this plays well in the echo chamber. Like most attempts at price controls it has a lot of unintended consequences such as fewer apartments built and rented out, landlords charging obscene amounts to a new renter knowing they cannot raise the prices as needed later on, landlords raising prices whether they need to or not because they can’t hike them quickly when needed, worse maintenance.
No one is proposing rent control in a vaccum. Arguing against that idea is disingenuous and is how you end up with the status quo of “rent control is actually bad for renters” that gets parroted in economics circles. State intervention is necessary for markets to exist in the first place and they have overwhelming power in shaping them.
Building large scale affordable public housing, incentive structures that promote the building of affordable high density private housing, banning corporate ownership of single family homes and short term rentals like AirBnB, limiting corporate ownership within apartment complexes, reworking zoning laws to better suit current needs, more robust mechanisms for tenant disputes and transparency for historical rental prices to prevent abuse.
All of that is possible if the political will was there.
Okay then let’s just drop an anchor into the market. Have the federal government commit to buying and managing 50,000 units in every major city. They’re available on the open market at cost plus 100 dollars a month. The 100 dollars goes into a fund and the city with the highest rents gets more federally owned apartments.
We just keep dropping anchors until developers provide reasonable housing at reasonable prices or housing is no longer a private market.
Government has a really big damn stick. If people’s needs don’t start getting met then those developers are going to feel it, right in their profits.
That last sentence is all that ever happens in supply side economics. It’s the entire handbook.
They’ve had enough carrot. It’s time for the stick.
5% is crazy talk when workers wages are going up 2.5% per year. Landlords need at least 20% more every year.
But if it pass, then it is first win. I fear that landlord are not going to let it happen without a fight
Is 5% really that crazy when the current rate is 20% as you describe?
I’m curious what the federal government can actually do in this situation. Most private leases are contracts under state law, not federal law.
You can always put new limits in that private contacts have to abide by. The only limit is the Constitution.
I would think tax law could make it completely untenable to own residential properties as rentals and give federal tax breaks to developers that build affordable housing? I’m sure there could also be federal grants to cities for easing zoning restrictions. Not sure how much of this is possible.
Cool, my rent is still 70% of what I make in a month. It’s almost like it’s already too late, but I’m too poor and uneducated to be an expert. Got any other ideas?
Do your boots have straps?
The best time to do it was any point in the last 100 years. The second best time is now.
I thought it was $55?
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.
That’s great!!!
Need to stop corporations buying houses next, and tamper foreigners buying up houses too (almost every country I’ve traveled to won’t let me buy so why not do the same?)
I feel like banning corporations from owning housing isn’t the panacea people expect it to be. It’s pretty impractical when you start talking about larger buildings and mixed use housing, and I’m not convinced it’s really a big driver of the problem.
I think a steep land value tax is a more workable solution. It incentivizes anyone who holds non-productive property (vacant homes in this case) to either make better use of the land or sell it. This also has the benefit of impacting individuals who own second homes or have mostly empty airbnbs.
Property taxes are insufficient for this purpose because they are generally based on the value of the home rather than just the land, so not only are they easier to game, but it disincentivizes improving the property.
I disagree. No need to force development to destroy natural landscapes just to avoid a tax. Simply tax multiple residential properties somewhat exponemtially.
100%, 133%, 200%, 350%, 500% or something
Right.
Owning one or two residential properties is fine, more is problematic.
I say “two” to handle the very common case of children putting their parents’ homes in their own name because Medicare clawback rules will take the home after they die if you don’t do it early enough.
The Medicare clawback crap is why we can’t expect to fix one issue with capitalism without addressing all the issues simultaneously. Can’t just raise minimum wage because landleeches will raise rents. Can’t just have universal healthcare because a lot of people would become unemployed when the insurance industry dies its overdue painful death.
Universal healthcare, student loan cancellation (and free state university), UBI, and the elimination of for-profit housing. All within one president’s term to have a chance of sticking past four years.
exponentially would be e. g. 100%, 1000%, 10 000%, etc.
you meant geometricallly
No, i was picturing an exponential with scale factors and coefficemts.
Crazy idea.
How about instead of corporations owning the unit, maybe the person who lives in the unit gets to own part of it.
I know crazy.
Owning part of a larger building is actually much more complicated than simply owning a house. I’m not sure everyone would actually want that even if they could buy the unit they live in at a low price.
I almost bought a condo in a multi-story building a couple of years ago and I’m glad as hell I didn’t. It was a one-bedroom unit for $125K, which is fine except that the monthly condo fees are $1000 (which includes utilities, at least), property taxes plus insurance are another $400, and the last three consecutive years residents have been hit with a special assessment of about $10K - which means I would have been paying around $2500 a month to live in a one-bedroom apartment that I’d already paid $125K for.
The biggest issue with corporations owning low income multifamily housing is that they act like slumlords. When you have nowhere else to go and the landlord won’t fix major issues then it takes a toll on you. When a kid sees this growing up, then it leads to antisocial behavior. Investors think that “passive investment” means no input at all when it requires a great deal of active management if contracts are being followed. They just know that the residents have no reasonable way to enforce the contract.
I agree about taxes. Tax the ever loving bejesus out of vacant rentals or speculative residential real estate. That will keep them from buying in the first place or deeply incentivize them to keep them rented out.
