Under rent control the highest possible rent is set by laws. If you fall behind on the allowed rent increase you’re usually not allowed to catch up to market rate later, such as when your tenant leaves and you put the unit back on the market. So to avoid getting stuck at below market rate with no legal way to catch up, you have to take the maximum allowable rent increase every year. In some situations it’s better to leave a unit empty and wait for someone be willing to rent at the rate than it is to lower rent, because the consequences of lowering rent will stick with the unit for years.

Without rent control, rents can be kept constant, moved up, or moved down without having to consider the consequences for years to come. The ceiling is set by the market rate, but there isn’t a function driving all of the landlords to raise by the annually permissible maximum so they try to discover it instead.

Rent control is instituted in cities that have constrained housing supplies, so the demand is there. Landlords switch to raising rents in unison by the maximum allowable amount every year because that’s the only way to operate.

I live in NYC, which has rent control, and the idea that a landlord would otherwise lower rent is hilarious.

Landlords raise rent by the max allowed because they can. There is no “catch up” because the purpose is to protect renters against huge jumps.

I think rent controlled units that sit empty should be subject to a tax based on an escalating percentage of the market rent. You can own property to rent out, but in a city with a tremendous shortage of housing, you need to rent it out.

I lived in a building with affordable housing units and management decided they would rather not rent them out at all. Horrible.

If the maximum allowable rent under rent control is bearable by the market, why would a landlord not do that in the absence of rent control? Are there landlords that are stupid and hate money?

> Landlords switch to raising rents in unison by the maximum allowable amount every year

Blaming this on rent control? This entire take is absurd. Because of the simple fact that landlords, especially using this software, do this in cities without rent control.

Unless now type arguing that Berkley rent control forces landlords in cities without rent control to seek maximum rents...

Rent control is flawed, limiting housing stock is flawed. But blaming landlord's pricing behavior on this is obviously false. Simply because it happens without rent control.

None of this is relevant to Berkeley since California law prohibits rent control on vacant units (and has for decades). When renting ti a new tenant landlords can charge whatever they like.

It's honestly absurd to read this thread because everyone who has ever rented in the SF bay area knows this, yet there's a whole discussion based on some half-assumed idea of what the system is.

Sounds like we should prevent rent increases. Fix the law, don't throw it away. Landlords that cannot afford to be landlords need to sell and go get a real job.

No one is entitled to be a lazy landlord taxing other people's existence and its extremely rare for a landlord to have built new houses, they mostly gatekeep the existing housing.

People in california need to take advantage of a populace willing to vote for constitutional amendments and override the politicians.