U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has failed to come out against Proposition 98, the landlord scheme to end rent control in California. The proposition, which would take away municipalities' ability to make their own housing policies based on their own specific needs, is hidden behind the fake title of eminent domain reform. But you only have to look at the list of people who initiated the bill to know that eminent domain reform has nothing to do with it. These are big landlords who could care less about eminent domain. They're very rich people like Sam Zell looking for an easy way to get richer. They have enough money to get anything they want on the ballot.
As the Los Angeles Times points out, the fact that the proposition seeks to hide its actual intent is reason enough to vote against it. Many people won't even realize that, whatever their politics, this is a vote for or against rent control. The sponsors of the proposition are too cowardly to point this out and take a stand for what they really believe.
The list of people opposing the landlord scheme is a long one and cuts across party lines. It includes not just the SEIU, Diane Feinstein, and the State Democratic Party, but also Arnold Schwarzenegger and former governor Pete Wilson.
Proposition 98 would have a devastating impact on San Francisco and parts of Los Angeles. 350,000 people in San Francisco, more than half the population, rely on rent control. Without rent control the city would change so drastically most of us wouldn't even recognize it. When Proposition 98 is defeated June 3 (and it will be because we've made a lot of mistakes in this state but we're not that stupid) a lot of us will remember Barbara Boxer failing the people on this issue. We'll know that when called for a position she let us down and we'll vote against her when her time comes due.
Update: The No On 98 Campaign has a signed statement from Barbara Boxer stating she is against Proposition 98. For the record, I called Barbara Boxer's California office and they confirmed to me that she had NOT taken a position on Proposition 98. The original genesis of this editorial is from that phone call. I just called them again, Wednesday, May 14, at 2:20pm, and was told, again, that it falls out of her jurisdiction and she has not taken a position on Proposition 98. I called her office as a constituent, which I am. I then called her press office in Washington to find out her official position on Proposition 98. The press office was unable to tell me and I have not received a call from the communications officer in charge. There's no mention of Proposition 98 on Barbara Boxer's website. I'm glad that there is evidence she is against Proposition 98, but her silence is still very troublesome. The fact that constituents aren't being told she is against the Proposition when they contact her California offices is also extremely troubling. That her position is not posted on her website is problematic. This is a major issue affecting a massive number of Californians, and I still can't get someone in the Barbara Boxer offices to confirm the Senator's position. This is not something for our Senator to be silent about. She's supposed to be leading on this issue but her own staff don't know her position on it. Why the confusion?
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Ouch! This is not the Boxer I'm familiar with. Can she please explain?
"Proposition 98 would have a devastating impact on San Francisco and parts of Los Angeles. 350,000 people in San Francisco, more than half the population, rely on rent control. Without rent control the city would change so drastically most of us wouldn't even recognize it. "
Many of those 350,000 folks you mention would not be who you expected to be benfitting form rent control. Most of these folks are middle class and above simply taking advantage of the situation.
Rent control has been a disadter everywhere it has been tried. It totally kills incentive to build enough living units in a given area. Causing the non-rent controlled units to be priced even higher thatn they would be.
I am totally with Boxer onthis one. The sham is prop 99 with its psudo protections that do not protect small businesses at all and has so many loopholes for residential that you could drive a bulldozer through it.
98...YES
99...NONONONONONONO
Oh yeah rent control is sooo fantastic! Who doesn't like: shortage of housing, lack of maintenance on existing housing, alternative "gray market" arrangements, bizarre lease hand-downs and sublets. Having endured seven years of this in Berkeley, I would not wish it on anyone.
But lets not forget the positives: we get to screw the landlord! It's remarkable that supposedly progressive people are perfectly happy to abuse the segment of the population that happens to own rental property. If you want to help the poor afford housing do the fair and reasonable thing and give them a subsidy funded by taxes levied on everyone. What is progressive about taxing Bob, who owns a rental on College Ave, and not his neighbor Alice, who prefers shares of Haliburton?
evilcat, You are right, we should tax the hell out of Haliburton. What? That's not what you meant to say? Well, it sounds good to me.
By the way, if Bott's is still on College Avenue, get a cream caramel ice cream cone for me.
Giev me a break - who are you going to vote for instead of Boxer? She is the best we have got.
I hold my nose and vote for Feinstein every six years, but I have no problem voting for Barbara Boxer.
Eminent domain is an important issue, but Prop 98 is a Trojan horse. CA voters, please vote NO on 98 and YES on 99 (which provides eminent domain protection without sacrificing rent control).
I haven't seen Boxer's position on this issue - it would make me sad if she were for 98, as I thought she was the CA senator who usually got things right, unlike Ms. "Please Figure Out A Way To Impeach Me" Feinstein.
Look one day all you people who support the greedy bastards that are gouging the fuck out of the working and middle class are gonna wake up and know what side of the bed you've been sleeping on.
Rent control in Berkeley (CA) dramatically reduced available housing until it became so short that developers were willing to build new apartments (not covered by rent control. Rent control is a failure and all that is left is a vestigial bureaucracy employing a pile of dead wood.
If communities really wanted to create low income housing, they would take the rent control fees, by-pass the bureaucrats and build units. If Berkeley had done that in the 1970's and 1980's there would certainly be more low income housing in the city than there now is.
Currently there is vacancy decontrol anyway effectively neutering the laws. Straw dog.
Geeze, at least there is one or 2 of you that understand how bad rent control is.
Rent control is a bad idea but once established is difficult to eliminate. In most municipalities it is a political not economic issue.
Doesn't Mia Farrow live in a rent controlled apartment in New York....or is that just a rumor? It is my understanding that there is some arcane rent control in Manhattan that has gone on for years and allows some fairly wealthy people to live in nice places for not much money. True or not true?
There are many ricj people benefitting from rent control......rent control is another socialist pipe dream gone bad.
Read your econ 101. There is no free lunch at the end of the day.
Initially, it wasn't a socialist pipe dream, it was a means of making sure that workers critically needed for defense production could find an affordable place to live in urban areas during WWII. But then once established, inertia took over and it was political suicide to try and eliminate.
A quick anecdote - when staying with a friend in the lower east side of Manhattan, there was regularly a crazed looking character prowling the fire escape and swinging an ax. My friend said the landlord had hired him, hoping the tenants would give up there leases. The place was a complete shit hole, but my friend figured a rent-controlled shit hole was better than nothing.
Better to let developers build enough quality housing to meet demand. Many of the working class neighborhoods in San Francisco were gentrified not beacuse of their quality and attractiveness to yuppies, but because there was no affordable alternative. I would have much preferred that my first house would have been down on the peninsula, but the Mission, 2 blocks from a heroin-infested project was the best we could qualify for at the time.
You wouldn't think that if you were relying on it to make ends meet.
She's voted poorly on so many decisions.
I remember when she jumped ship and supported the death penalty for a cop killer. Because killing one person is wrong, but somehow killing 2 makes it right.
Oh, it must be difficult to pretend you care about the people underneath you...
If you are renting out a property, why should you have to lose money on it?
It is not mutually exclusive for landlord's to make a profit and people to have affordable housing.
We need citizenship based "rent control".
If you have lived in this country for 40 years, you pay rent based on the average cost 40 years ago.
If you have lived in this country for 2 years, you pay much, much more.
If you can't demonstrate citizenship, you pay double.
Without such a plan, America will "change so drastically most of us wouldn't even recognize it."
What is her position? I see no statement that she is for this proposition. By your logic I am for Prop 98 because I have not been against it. I agree Prop 98 is a bad Prop, like most of the Prop put on the Ballots in California.
Have you contacted Senator Boxers office for a comment? I don't see a comment stating the Senators position. Please take the time to get a comment before you write a story.
Mr. Elloitt,
She is no friend of the working class.
There are three sides to every story: his side, her side and the truth.
Sorry, but no where in this cheap shot against Barbara Boxer is there even a tiny attempt to explain her actual postion on this subject. If you are going to attack someone for not shouting "how high" when you ask her to jump, at least have the decency to tell us what she did say.
While I do not know 'her actual position' on this issue. can you explain 'her actual position' on traveling to Conn to campaign for holy joe lieberman after the democratic primary when he had lost to Lamont? Disgusting! Some democrats look a lot like repugs.
That act alone has always made me suspect of Barbara Boxer.
She out did undercover republican Diane Feinstein on this one.
I see you are enjoying yourself making fun of the wording of my comment. Sure beats trying to answer the substantive point. Is the subject we are discussing prop 98 or let's all go get Barbara Boxer?
To people like you, any attack from the left must be right. If she took a position last year or two years ago or ten years ago you did not like then any current attack on her is fine in your book.
I see you also do not know her position. I also see you do not answer the question, 'What kind of person goes to campaign for the loser in a state where the voters have clearly chosen another'? Ned Lamont was the clear winner, Boxer said to the Conn voters, stick it, I'm here for lieberman.
You post, 'Sorry, but no where in this cheap shot against Barbara Boxer is there even a tiny attempt to explain her actual postion on this subject.' Some of us would like to know her position, would you? If so, why don't you put up a real defense and state her position?
Stephen,
I hear you. I lived through the referendum to end rent control in Massachusetts. A campaign funded 50-1 by NYState property owners eager to do the same in their own bailiwick. My Cambridge neighbors were unaware that it was a state-wide measure and rent control went down to defeat by 50-49. In NYC I am currently in a State Supreme Court case against my landlord who has defrauded the City, not properly registering his building - this while NYState is still recovering from the aggregate damage that the Pataki years did to housing. All of our rental construction in the past 7 years has been luxury housing. Supposedly we have an 80/20 plan, but that's a sham, with brokerage firms circumventing the program and still getting the tax breaks.
Please learn from my experiences in MA and NY. DO educate voters - especially renters - they often are unaware of upcoming measures even though they generally constitute a working majority.
Send your piece to The Nation. It's time for them to focus on this - they had a poor record when the above was happened. And in a recession, the removal of such protections would have a devastating effect.
Good Luck!
-CI
Boxer is well known as the dimmest bulb in the Senate. This reputation has been well deserved. However, in this case she might have stumbled on the correct decision.
Rent control depresses supply which keeps prices artificially high. Increase supply, which will happen when profits are enhanced, and prices will fall.
Let the market rule!
New York City has rent control and stabilization. Building is rampant in Manhattan and the Bronx. So I think you're really, really wrong.
The market is a no-brained moron that is wasteful and capricious. It has no compassion. It's the type of mentality that thought it was a good idea for energy and automotive companies to buy up all the electric mass transit in urban areas and replace them with buses. Its attention span is short and manifests itself in bandwagon climbing and lemming suicide. The government put man on the moon, developed nuclear energy and the internet, and built the interstate highway system. The market does not really believe in competition, but in monopoly. It believes in deregulating everything and in unrestrained growth--it's mission statement is no different from cancer's.
Foreclosed houses are forcing rents up. I's just soon have the option of rent control so everybody doesn't have to sink completely. I like Barbara Boxer.
"Increase supply"? Have you been to San Francisco? Good luck with that. Without rent control in my fair city, the working and middle classes will be driven out, and I'll be "suburbmama" not "sfmama".
That is acceptable.
Mr. Elliot, I have a suggestion for you and the rest of the ignorant posters here. Try taking ECONOMICS 101; there is this concept known as the law of unintended consequences. If you bother to educate yourself you'll find that rent controls have been proven to reduce the availability of housing and drive away the very people you supposedly are trying to protect--those lower on the income scale. Moreover, rent control leads to increased incidences of discrimination as well as housing code violations. Word limitations prevent me from providing an in-depth explanation, but I'm sure an intelligent person such as you can do his own research.
In addition to my post below, I see that I called to respond to you "cct1984."
First of all, the "law of intended consequences" is an expression, not a "law" in either micro of macro. It has no bearing.
Secondly, there is NO consensus that rent controls reduce availability of housing. The reverse is true in a hyper-capitalist marketplace (see Robert Reich's new book) where luxury, not affordable housing, is the focus.
Third, in my years living under rent control in MA and rent stabilization in NYC I have never seen any connection between RC/RS and discrimination - remember from your ECO 101 - correlation does not mean caustion.
You got studies, show them to us.
I've LIVED it and rent control is an necessary cap against greed.
-CI
OK, call it simply "unintended consequences"...feel better? Don't get caught up in semantics, the point is still valid.
I'm well aware of the difference between correlation and causation, and I believe the proponderance of he evidence, as well as the opinion of most economists, support my view in regards to rent controls. I've included links to a couple of articles (I could give you dozens); this is a well studied area:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=110003514
http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=430
http://www.questia.com/library/politics-and-government/public-policy/rent-control.jsp
If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they could not come up with a conclusion; the dismal science indeed. Also, I am betting there is nary a dram of diversity in American schools of economics. Don't they all bow down facing Chicago every day?
Bartley, the first source, was the rabidly conservative editorialist of the Wall Street Journal.
FCCP is the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a so-called neoliberal think tank that believes government should have nothing to do with any economic enterprise.
I went no further, because these are greedy the minds that polluted the world and have brought it to the precipice of extinction.
Boxer still has to answer for her 2006 trip to Connecticut, where she campaigned for Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont.
I haven't yet seen a cogent argument against allowing someone who owns property to set their price on it. I didn't see one above, either.
Semper fi
Posted May 13, 2008 | 04:40 PM (EST)