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If it's sitting unoccupied and the owner has no plans to do anything with it, the owner is being irrational. If the owner does have plans to do something with it, they have to kick the tenant out, meaning that any additional supply as a result of renting out these houses is short-term, thus just pushing the problem back a bit. You'd still have to deal with the problem in the future.



1) Maybe they don't have plans to do anything with it today, but they don't want to get locked into renting to a tenant for decades. That's not irrational.

2) No, that's not just pushing the problem back a bit. That is wrong. There will always be owners who want do do something with their property somewhere down the road. If you allow them to rent it out in the meantime (without getting locked into a forever contract) you can permanently increase the total rental stock in a community.


Owners may evict a tenant in an owner move in. There are a variety of regulations that you can get caught up in, designed to protect from abuse by commercial landlords, but practically speaking, if you own a single building and wish to evict rent controlled tenants live in one of the units, you'll be able to. Your objections continue to demonstrate an unfamiliarity with rent control in sf.

@harryh: your complaint is rent control prevents owners from renting out their property (while doing something in the meantime) without getting locking into a forever rental. For small landlords, it does not, at least not in this enumerated (most likely the most important) instance. As a small landlord, most importantly of a single unit, you may rent it out as you wish and move back in later, evicting a rent controlled tenant if necessary.


Not sure why you didn't reply to my comment, but to answer your edit:

In the current instance it seems pretty likely that the owner has no intention of moving in but instead wants to sell an unoccupied house.


Not once have I mentioned anything related to owner move in.


Well, this assumes that renting out a house has no costs; if income is less than costs over the course of the lease, it's rational to keep a property off the market.


At the extreme end, one thing that they'll do is become a slumlord - have noncompliant housing that isn't registered.

Yes, it's illegal, and the penalties are severe if the person is caught. But it's an option. And if the current owner is sitting there thinking, "Shit, I can't rent this building out and make it worth my while," (property tax, cost of keeping it up to code, etc) he'll sell it to a slumlord who can make a profit out of it.




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