So every lease becomes a lifetime deal. Hmm. Since rent keeps going up, this means prices are going to have to go up dramatically now so that I'm not completely hosed in ten to twenty years. After all, rent control increase caps are pretty much always below property tax increase caps.

Long-term, me-the-landlord is going to be put in a situation where rent doesn't even cover taxes. Nevermind repairs, maintenance, and insurance.

> You think it's ok to do something that will benefit your bank account but will simultaneously force someone to move out of their home?

Huh. I guess evictions for non-payment are out now. After all, it's their home, and it would be evil for me to evict someone from their home just for the sake of my bank account...

Between this and your previous point, you've made an excellent case that a moral and ethical person who owns property in SF would refuse to rent it under any circumstances. Well done.

> Enriching yourself at the expense of others is an asshole move, to me at least.

Are you aware that you just defined turning a profit as an asshole move? Perhaps you want to rethink your definition.

Nowhere did I say that, and I'll thank you to not put words in my mouth.

Actually, interestingly, you've now also defined profit as a zero-sum game across society. For some to be enriched, others must falter and be brought lower. If that's what profit is, then yes, I do believe profit is an asshole move. (But I don't think that's what profit is!)

It's entirely possible for landlords to raise rents in such a way that continues to cover their costs, continues to provide a tidy profit margin, but does not displace tenants. That's why I said it's possible to maintain your current profit (which you could consider a fixed dollar amount or a percentage, and my argument still holds) and did NOT say maintain your current rent.

OK. What nuance of your stated position did I mistake? In what way do you make a profit and enrich yourself without it coming at the expense of another? Bear in mind that trading something of yours for money from someone else is very literally a trade taking place at their expense - they are spending money.

> It's entirely possible for landlords to raise rents in such a way that continues to cover their costs, continues to provide a tidy profit margin, but does not displace tenants.

Not when prop 13 caps are generally higher than rent control caps. Over time, a property-owner will lose ground and their margin will shrink as their costs increase faster than their incomes.

In practice, this manifests as landlords deciding not to invest in the upkeep and maintenance so they can preserve their profit margins.

I don't believe we're talking about rent control here, or at least not exclusively. The original article is about someone's rent increasing by over 400%. I can't imagine how that could be justified by cost increases on the landlord's side.

I'm not arguing that the current system of rent control and property tax increase limits is working properly and is the best way to do things.

At any rate, you're re-framing the argument here to try to make me look bad. Your original question asked about landlords making 10x of their existing profit. If the landlord is already making a profit (which was the premise of your question), clearly they're not having issues making money in a rent-control+prop 13 environment. There are many multipliers between 0x and 10x, and I would argue that the responsible multiplier in order to maintain non-asshole status is well below 10... and even well below 1... but certainly greater than 0.

Just to be clear, though, to reiterate my initial point and make my position clear: if you're making a $500 profit off a $2000 monthly rental, and decide that you can and should make $5000 (a 10x increase in profit) by raising the rent to $7000, if that's at the expense of the renter's ability to pay... yes, it is my opinion that you're an asshole. That is the original question you asked, and that's the question I answered.

Tough. If your tenant isn't doing anything that you can evict them for, that's too bad for you as the landlord. When a landlord rents out his property as a home for another, that property becomes the lessee's castle. In all but a very few aspects, that property is now effectively the lessee's to use in any and all ways that comport with their leasing agreement.

> What if the landlord wants somewhere for their aging grandmother to live so they can care for her?

In California, there is a legal way to do this. It's one of the ways that the Ellis Act permits landlords to evict rent-controlled tenants.

The Ellis Act is a pretty fair and just law. It recognizes that landlords are human, and might have real reasons to get out of the property rental market. (Or that they might need to use their only rental unit to house themselves and their family.) It also recognizes that some all-too-human landlords do try to maximize their profit margins despite the very real damage that they would do to the lives of others.

And pretty much everywhere, you also have the option of increasing their rent to get them to want to move out. Like has happened here.

> The Ellis Act is a pretty fair and just law.

Really? Because if I walk outside and ask around, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be told that it's inherently evil and abusive and needs to be repealed, because a lease should be a lifetime contract for a locked-in low rate.

Of course it does! A big part of whether or not someone is an asshole is about intent.

What if the landlord wants somewhere for their aging grandmother to live so they can care for her? Would that still make them an asshole? I suspect you'll say yes, because they're looking to push someone out of their home.

The Ellis Act provides for landlords who want to take a property off the rental market, so this sort of thing actually is explicitly allowed by law. I think this is a tough thing, because yes, you are pushing someone out of a home, but I think it's a good balance of property ownership rights vs. the public good, as you're saying you want to do something completely different with the property, rather than just finding a way to do the exact same thing but line your pockets more.

Maybe the tenant has caused so many headaches that it's not worth putting up with them for the profit anymore.

The problem with this sort of reasoning is that it's subjective. A landlord could decide that a tenant is a "headache" because the plumbing in the building is terrible and the toilet keeps flooding the bathroom for no reason, and the tenant has decided to withhold a portion of rent until it's fixed. Should the landlord be allowed to evict the tenant because of that? I'd say no. But if the "headache" is that the tenant is constantly violating quiet-time rules and waking people up, then maybe repeated behavior of that sort should be grounds for eviction.

For this sort of thing I'd want the law to stay out of it. A signed lease is a contract between landlord and tenant; enumerate the "headaches" that will lead to eviction. Of course there's room for interpretation, but let the lawyers and courts deal with that.

OK. Then what is it? What's your happy medium, where you are getting money from someone, providing something in exchange, and making a profit without enriching yourself at their expense?

I don't think the exact number is all that important, but there's likely a range of acceptable values for different landlords, properties, and tenants. My position is that a 10x or even 1x increase is crazy and throws the public interest out the window.

When it comes to housing, people tend to buy/rent as much as they think they can afford (and sometimes more). You can argue that this is foolish (and I'd agree!), but that's the reality of the situation. Even doubling someone's rent would likely be catastrophic for their finances. The idea that landowners should be allowed to extract every bit of profit possible out of land -- a public, limited good -- no matter what the consequences, is absolutely reprehensible to me.

And this idea has led to strict rent control, which in turn has led to NIMBYism, which together have led to the clusterfuck that is San Francisco's housing market. Privileged groups act first and foremost to preserve their privilege, and rent control works by creating a privileged group. Hilarity ensues.

You said you wanted to gain in understanding. I think you should internalize that before going on. It's critical to the whole issue.

In short, you need to consider that attempting to put your ideals into policy may have resulted in creating the problems you fear.

That's an excellent point and is something I'll try to reflect on.

Do we just not care about that person?

But I'd rather be able to care about both people. I'd rather SF's planning process wasn't so idiotic that it's impossible to build at the rate we need to in order to house everyone who wants to live here, at whatever economic level. I'd rather that rent control hadn't helped to foster a culture of NIMBYism that causes all new projects to get shot down, drastically scaled down, or at best delayed several years.

The main priority in getting ourselves out of this housing crisis should be to build like crazy, and accept that neighborhoods will change, and the city will change. Once we've done that, and demand has stabilized, we can do things like eliminate or drastically scale back rent control, or at least make it more sane. But for now I believe it's necessary to avoid screwing people over.

What's been noted repeatedly across history is that rent control tends strongly to encourage a culture of NIMBYIsm. Rent control has contributed heavily to creating the current situation and its persistence increases the political resistance to building more housing.

Have you not noticed the routine grumbling about extending rent control to new housing and different kinds of housing? That scares the crap out of would-be builders and investers. Couple that with moralizing about how profit margins need to be razor-thin to be morally acceptable, and the scenarios you imagine are ones in which no developer is willing to work.

The result is pretty much what we have now - not enough building. If rent control were relaxed now, or even made hugely more difficult to extend, those fears would be reduced.

But right now? Rent control has created a witch's brew for political stasis. That's what you wanted, right? To enable privilege for people who are deserving by virtue of living in sufficiently old housing?

Not at all. But that's what we have now. It's easy to say "we shouldn't have done it this way", but simply removing tenant protections isn't going to solve the problem: it's just going to put all the power in the hands of landlords and builders... and of course they're going to abuse that power.

Existing rent control[1] isn't causing a lack of building. A city-enforced lack of building is causing a lack of building. Both the city planning committee and the NIMBY crowd just don't want things to change. On that, I completely agree with you.

Couple that with moralizing about how profit margins need to be razor-thin to be morally acceptable, and the scenarios you imagine are ones in which no developer is willing to work.

It's give and take. I'm not advocating for razor-thin profit margins, and I'm getting a little weary of you suggesting that my position is that the only alternative to the crazy rent increases are no rent increases at all. There has to be a happy medium somewhere, where landlords can increase their profit without driving people out.

[1] For the record, I am not in favor of expanding rent control, but I do believe we're at least temporarily stuck with the rent control we have now. Killing the existing rent control without first drastically increasing the housing supply (coupled with finding a way to allow landlords to raise rents without requiring that their tenants move away) would absolutely destroy lower-income renters.