I <3 Economics is the Professor, John B. Taylor's opening line and end goal for his students. Oddly enough I am intrigued! This course is challenging but accessible, so if you are considering taking an online course, I say give it a try. One of the things about this class is that we have reading and prompts to help us apply the concepts, the last prompt made me realize I have real opinions about the shifts in my hometown.
Prompt: This article is an opinion piece on rent control in San Francisco. If rent control is economically inefficient, why is it still used as a public policy tool? What might some consequences of rent control that may hurt those that they are trying to help?
My Reponse (slightly in response to a peer's comment about her honest and compassionate father-in-law who owns a building of apartments in SF):
I see your point, but at the same time...U.S policy deals with the hard decisions between support of its constituents and the “free market.” Something that I am learning is that Economics is about numeric or theoretical efficiency based on patterns of behavior. With that said there are times that the economically efficient response is not the compassionate response. It seems that we could develop possibly different housing markets all together to take into account the variety of demand and supply numbers we know are at play when we discuss people’s income and their ability or inability to find affordable and quality housing. Often this also means that if you are in a cheaper location for housing, you have a higher transportation/commute time which is not a reasonable economic outcome for specifically low-income workers.
To go back to the question, how can these policies hurt the people they are tying to protect; let’s look at SF now. Even though I grew up there I probably will never be able to live there again. Due in part to the Ellis Act and that rent control property owners are opting to find loopholes to kick everyone out QUICKLY to build condos and houses for even more wealthy people; can't we see this viscious cycle of greed by now? This leaves thousands of families having to quickly find new, affordable places that are miles away from their jobs and communities.
I am curious to learn if anyone knows of more equity based and efficient housing markets. I like the idea of employee housing programs, but those programs have failed us in the past. I see that policy can be more flexible and nimble and that we do have to curtail the higher ups from being so damn greedy.
I understand the story of your honest father-in-law, but there is also the story of thousands of people being displaced just because a place has been perceived as trendy when it was ALWAYS dynamic, compelling, eclectic, and now it's palatable by our "higher educated" populations that cannot create their own dynamic environments where they stand.
My slogan and goal moving forward:
I <3 equity
Please leave comments and resources below, as this is a new trajectory and line of inquiry for me. I hope to investigate this full time soon and to hear many more critical opinions and cases.
Images: the summer Internship I facilitated investigating the multiple perspectives to gentrification in the Mission. http://inclinegallerysf.com/2014/08/06/youth-art-exchange-mission-shift/
