If you’re interested in whether rent control makes rent prices go down — and plenty of people think it actually makes them go up — then stop what you’re doing and watch this video on San Francisco’s real-estate war, by my colleague Andrew Stern.
The video features a heartbreaking interview with artist David Brenkus, who has lived in a rent-controlled apartment on Walter Street for 34 years. His building has been bought, and now he is being evicted so the new landlord can move in. Brenkus’ rent is $735 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, which includes a woodshop in the basement.
And this is the centre of the entire rent-control debate, whether in San Francisco, New York, London, or anywhere else. Rents and property prices are undeniably high. Low- and moderate-income workers are being forced out of neighbourhoods they have been living in for years. And yet …
… Brenkus’ bargain-rate flat has turned out to be his undoing. Rent control is great if you’re poor, at least in the short term. But here is a guy who has had three decades to buy his own place. He failed, undoubtedly, because $735 for a five-room spread tempted him into staying just a bit longer, just a bit longer, just a bit longer, and he never got around to obtaining a mortgage. (You can read a bit more about Brenkus’ situation here and here.)
It’s a perfect illustration of the way rent control can hurt the poor and benefit the rich, even though it is intended to do the opposite. Rent control might help poor people temporarily, but they are screwed in the long term because they don’t own the place. Once the eviction notice comes, as it always does, the renter who has spent years paying below-rate prices is unequipped to deal with the realities of modern housing. (A New York real-estate appraiser once told me the same thing: “I’d never live in a rent-control unit — it ruins people’s lives.”)
Brenkus will have a hard time* because San Francisco’s property market has gone bonkers in a way that discriminates against the poor and the middle class. But Brenkus will have a hard time also because he essentially wants to continue living in 1982, the year he moved in.
$735 a month…for an apartment with two bedrooms…in the heart of San Francisco…in the year 2016. Wow. Artist David Brenkus should thank his lucky stars and get ready to suck his rent-controlling landlord off through how he was able to pay the official 1982 price for over THIRTY. EXTRA. YEARS!!!…all the way through the Silicon Valley boom, and on to 2016 where San Fran is regarded as the #1 most expensive city in the United States of America. In that drastic span, there have been tons of people California Dreamin’ about living in such a beautiful and flourishing location, yet unable to come anywhere close to affording the hefty and ever-inflating cost of living that the city now requires, a cost of living that is even higher to outsiders due to the need to make-up for apartments with controlled renting, such as this case. Perhaps if rent regulation didn’t exist, then some of the outsiders who dreamed of making it in SF would’ve been able to just manage the slightly less expensive, and theoretically FAIR payments, but unfortunately for them, there’s no such luck thanks to guys like our boy David. So if anything, this tragic hero is actually a gluttonous villain, and should receive zero sympathy for essentially cheating the system for over a quarter of a century. Yes, it’s unfortunate that the world seemed to pass this guy right by, as he was minding his own business, and creating “art” (art that wasn’t profitable enough to purchase an actual mortgage he could fall back on by the way), but this is truly a case of “don’t be sorry that it’s over, smile because it happened” if there ever was one. You received over three decades of VERY REASONABLE LIVING in a skyrocketingly expensive city, and now it’s time to pack your bags and face the times that you haven’t been keeping up with for so many years. You were simply living on borrowed time, David, and like the great Lennon song states, you apparently didn’t have a thought for tomorrow.
But hey, do I have some good news for you, Davey-boy! One of my two roommates is leaving our apartment in the greatly historic and slightly dangerous Boston region of DORCHESTER (or as the classy and articulate locals call it, DAH-CHEST-AH!), and his rent, uncontrolled and fair, is listed at $735 a month – what a coincidence, huh??! All you have to do is leave behind one of the very best climates in the country for a super humid and freezingly cold atmosphere of utter misery! We may not have heat in our actual apartment, but we sure feel it (sometimes) from the neighbors down below! You may be a little crowded sharing a two-bedroom apartment and couch with two more people now, but our brotherly love will fix that in no time, and we will make amends! The hot water heater only works during the first shower, but we can all share it together in a single bath on a cold, winter’s day! That’ll surely be a great bonding experience– one where we can all pay tribute to the Mamas and the Papas, and dream together of what life is like in sunny CALIFORN-I-A, though you’ll be way ahead of us, since you’ll actually have over thirty years-worth of memories to keep yourself nice and warm, whereas we’ll just simply be fantasizing about oh what could be, and whether or not our bath-buddy would be a good lay.
Come on in Davey, the water’s FINE!
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