Rent Control: Assessing Policies in Santa Monica After the Earthquake
Just envision a landlord stepping up before the Santa Monica Rent Control Zealots, oops, sorry . . . Board . . . at any time the past 15 years and requesting the right to raise rents $70, $80 or $100 a month a unit in order to improve the structural soundness of his or her building. Such amounts would be quite reasonable for $80,000 or $100,000 of work to solidify a 10-unit building.
The poor landlord would have been strung up--by the thumbs at least, and possibly by the neck. No, the idea of passing on structural improvement costs would have been derided as an attempt to get rid of “undesirable” tenants and the property owner laughed out of the hearing room.
People act to protect their “economic interests” in property. To a large degree, the effect of Santa Monica’s Draconian form of rent control has been to remove any economic interest in property except that of the city itself. In published comments a few years ago, Derek Shearer, former Santa Monica planning commissioner and husband of the city’s former mayor (Ruth Yanatta Goldway), proudly asserted that the economic interest was transferred to the tenants of Santa Monica--ostensibly free of charge. But, in reality, the transfer was to produce votes that allow a group of anti-intellectual elites to control every aspect of city life: our schools, our commercial development policies, and the way we think and live, the utterly senseless homeless policies concerning our public parks.
The consequences of rent control can be seen, of course, in the extensive damage suffered by so many of controlled units throughout the city--many buildings that long ago would have been cycled out of existence or substantially renovated were it not for the policies and practices of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights. That SMRR’s leaders, to hang onto absolute power, behave more like fascists than well-intended leftists is at once ironic and rather revealing about the underlying values of ‘60s rebels grown old and tired.
Now, of course, the SMRR-dominated council and the totalitarians on the Rent Control Board are threatening all kinds of punishments to landlords who do not “make everything OK and right again” for their cherished voter base--to wit, subsidized tenants.
Perhaps though, the disastrous economic consequences will finally give a sufficient number of landlords cause for reflection about whether they truly can continue in the rental business at all. SMRR has already engaged in the economic “taking” of much of their investment--just maybe, many will choose not pony up thousands of unrecoverable dollars to keep SMRR voters happy.
KIP DELLINGER
Santa Monica
