<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Kalium</author><text>What you&amp;#x27;re talking about is the idea that economics shouldn&amp;#x27;t apply because there are a lot more emotions involved in house than in most other markets. Do I need to point out that that is silly, or is it sufficiently self-evident that economics applies anyway?&lt;p&gt;The real answer tends to be building enough housing for everyone. That also tends to be politically unpalatable, because the people with all the emotional attachments want their neighborhoods frozen in amber. So low-income people get pushed out by increasing rent and high-income people move in.&lt;p&gt;Pick your poison, really.</text><parent_chain><item><author>wpietri</author><text>Apparently &amp;quot;normal good&amp;quot; is an economic technical term, and apparently you are using that technical definition here and not the normal use of &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot;. I have no idea why you&amp;#x27;d do that; as you point out, that technical term bears no relation to what I&amp;#x27;m talking about.</text></item><item><author>escherize</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand this argument. _Quality_ housing seems to me, to be a normal good, because when income increases the demand for such housing increases.  Even crappy places in SF seem to be quality housing. Whether or not there are class issues, or your house is sentimental is irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;Edit: typo</text></item><item><author>wpietri</author><text>What you&amp;#x27;re missing is that housing is not a normal good.&lt;p&gt;Sure, there is a housing marketplace, which can provide some correction. But houses are also homes. People are born in them. People die in them. They love them, they cherish them, they fight for them. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of truth in the saying, &amp;quot;Home is where the heart is.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What you&amp;#x27;re missing in that scenario is the large number of people who are displaced not just from their fungible, replaceable housing unit, but their home, their neighborhood, their family, and perhaps their city and their job.&lt;p&gt;Note also there are substantial class issues in the sentence, &amp;quot;Lower income renters move out, higher income families move in.&amp;quot; The notion that poor people should take it on the chin because rich people covet their homes is not politically neutral. One could just as well say that it&amp;#x27;s the rich people, more able to cope, that should bear the burden of market fluctuations.&lt;p&gt;So I don&amp;#x27;t think, &amp;quot;is rent control even a good idea&amp;quot; is the right question. It&amp;#x27;s more like, &amp;quot;Are there more effective ways than rent control to reduce the harm?&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>IgorPartola</author><text>OTOH, how much can you restrict the property owner? What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Would it be OK for the law to tell the owner to fix it some other way? What if both units were destroyed in a natural disaster and a new structure had to be built from nothing? Is that still rent-controlled?&lt;p&gt;Also, is rent control even a good idea? In the short term, it obviously protects a renter from the market running away from them. In the long term it seems to create artificial conditions which eventually blow up in everyone&amp;#x27;s face. Imagine a plan where the current renters had a viable alternative. Now drop all rent control laws and let the market correct itself. Lower income renters move out, higher income families move in. Rent goes up higher. Newly moved in renters realize that they are paying 10x as much as the rest of the country, leave. Rent goes down. The market has corrected itself and all is well. What am I missing?</text></item><item><author>jackowayed</author><text>If you read the caption, the real issue here is a horrible abuse of the rent control law. When the renter signed their lease, the unit was covered by rent control, putting very tight restrictions on rent increases and evictions. However, the landlord then essentially destroyed the other unit in the building so that they could reclassify the building as a single-family home instead of a multi-unit building. Single-family homes are not covered by the rent control law.&lt;p&gt;This should obviously not be legal; if you&amp;#x27;re going to have a rent control, you can&amp;#x27;t let landlords take a unit that should have rent control and make it not rent controlled. At the very least, these kinds of changes shouldn&amp;#x27;t allow the landlord to escape an active rent control obligation to a current tenant.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>“Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”</title><url>https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153190864139878</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>growupkids</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t follow, privately owned housing is a normal good.  It&amp;#x27;s a Textbook case, as average living standards rise, the total demand for housing expands, as does the demand for more expensive properties as people look to move &amp;quot;up market&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I am misunderstanding your point?&lt;p&gt;Edit:  I think I understand, my degrees in economics so I assumed you were using the term as its used in economics.  Apparently you were not.</text><parent_chain><item><author>wpietri</author><text>Apparently &amp;quot;normal good&amp;quot; is an economic technical term, and apparently you are using that technical definition here and not the normal use of &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot;. I have no idea why you&amp;#x27;d do that; as you point out, that technical term bears no relation to what I&amp;#x27;m talking about.</text></item><item><author>escherize</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand this argument. _Quality_ housing seems to me, to be a normal good, because when income increases the demand for such housing increases.  Even crappy places in SF seem to be quality housing. Whether or not there are class issues, or your house is sentimental is irrelevant.&lt;p&gt;Edit: typo</text></item><item><author>wpietri</author><text>What you&amp;#x27;re missing is that housing is not a normal good.&lt;p&gt;Sure, there is a housing marketplace, which can provide some correction. But houses are also homes. People are born in them. People die in them. They love them, they cherish them, they fight for them. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of truth in the saying, &amp;quot;Home is where the heart is.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;What you&amp;#x27;re missing in that scenario is the large number of people who are displaced not just from their fungible, replaceable housing unit, but their home, their neighborhood, their family, and perhaps their city and their job.&lt;p&gt;Note also there are substantial class issues in the sentence, &amp;quot;Lower income renters move out, higher income families move in.&amp;quot; The notion that poor people should take it on the chin because rich people covet their homes is not politically neutral. One could just as well say that it&amp;#x27;s the rich people, more able to cope, that should bear the burden of market fluctuations.&lt;p&gt;So I don&amp;#x27;t think, &amp;quot;is rent control even a good idea&amp;quot; is the right question. It&amp;#x27;s more like, &amp;quot;Are there more effective ways than rent control to reduce the harm?&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>IgorPartola</author><text>OTOH, how much can you restrict the property owner? What if the other unit needed to be knocked down for a reason other than to get rid of rent control? Would it be OK for the law to tell the owner to fix it some other way? What if both units were destroyed in a natural disaster and a new structure had to be built from nothing? Is that still rent-controlled?&lt;p&gt;Also, is rent control even a good idea? In the short term, it obviously protects a renter from the market running away from them. In the long term it seems to create artificial conditions which eventually blow up in everyone&amp;#x27;s face. Imagine a plan where the current renters had a viable alternative. Now drop all rent control laws and let the market correct itself. Lower income renters move out, higher income families move in. Rent goes up higher. Newly moved in renters realize that they are paying 10x as much as the rest of the country, leave. Rent goes down. The market has corrected itself and all is well. What am I missing?</text></item><item><author>jackowayed</author><text>If you read the caption, the real issue here is a horrible abuse of the rent control law. When the renter signed their lease, the unit was covered by rent control, putting very tight restrictions on rent increases and evictions. However, the landlord then essentially destroyed the other unit in the building so that they could reclassify the building as a single-family home instead of a multi-unit building. Single-family homes are not covered by the rent control law.&lt;p&gt;This should obviously not be legal; if you&amp;#x27;re going to have a rent control, you can&amp;#x27;t let landlords take a unit that should have rent control and make it not rent controlled. At the very least, these kinds of changes shouldn&amp;#x27;t allow the landlord to escape an active rent control obligation to a current tenant.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>“Your monthly rent .. shall increase from $2145 to $8900”</title><url>https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153190864139878</url></story>