Path: utzoo!yunexus!unicus!craig
From: craig@unicus.UUCP (Craig D. Hubley)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Rent control, zoning, and politics.
Message-ID: <2303@unicus.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 88 23:29:56 GMT
Article-I.D.: unicus.2303
Posted: Sun Mar  6 18:29:56 1988
References: <594@oscvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: craig@Unicus.COM (Craig D. Hubley)
Distribution: ont
Organization: Unicus Software Inc., Toronto, Ont.
Lines: 64

I don't normally post to can.politics, but I think this debate has
missed some important points

>I forget where this quotation ('quote' is *not* a noun!!!) came from,
>but someone (well-known) said:
>	" Rent Control is the best way to destroy a city - 
>	  after bombing."

I don't remember the name either, but it was a Swedish economist who had
lived in Stockholm since the war, and seen the effects of it on that city.

Another useful quotation, from a Toronto official last year:

	"There's plenty of low-income housing in Toronto.
	But Yuppies are living in it."

*I* live in a $600/month *three bedroom* apartment with a nice bay window
that looks out onto Spadina Avenue and U of T, just above a bookstore
in the Annex.  This is cheaper than dirt, and I make enough money to live
somewhere else and leave this to a large family.  But I won't.  I won't 
leave because I can't be kicked out under Ontario law, and my rent can't
be raised even to inflation levels without political crap that my landlord
(a nice guy) has no time for.  He's not bothering to do anything with the
building, I even paint and maintain my apartment myself.  When it falls down
in ten years (it's ancient), you can be damn sure no apartment building will
replace it.  No low-income family will ever live here again.  Nor can you,
so don't even ask.  :-)

Someone also brought up that vacancy was dropping and rents were rising
*before* rent control, and that in fact is *true*.  But the reason is 
again political:  zoning.  Toronto has the most restrictive zoning laws
in the *world*, and not coincidentally the easiest to bribe your way
around, if you're Mr. Big Developer and have lawyers and friends.  Since
you have to bribe your way in to do *anything*, why not a big moneymaking
office skyscraper downtown?  Why waste all those lawyers' fees on a low
income housing building, they're the same whether the building is a cash
cow or not.  It was the addition of these `startup fees' to any given
building project that priced low-rent starts out of the market originally,
in my opinion.

>In short, rent control is a fundamentally warped policy (well, maybe the
>intentions were good, but that doesn't make it *right*) designed only
>to get votes from the lower classes.

Agreed.  Politicians always act in a manner that will expand their power,
as rent control, zoning, subsidies and restrictions and regulations always do.
Eventually they all must be killed or driven out in a revolution to start over.

Another quote, hard to attribute again but I think it was Hume
(someone eighteenth-century, anyway, the best century for philosophy):

	"Democracy lasts until the public realizes it can 
	vote itself funds out of the public chest."

Democracy would appear to have passed that point, at least in Canada.

>Jan Sven.
>Jan  (Jan, from Amsterdam) no-hyphen Sven  Trabandt
>...!{allegro,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!oscvax!jan

	Craig Hubley, Unicus Corporation, Toronto, Ont.
	craig@Unicus.COM				(Internet)
	{uunet!mnetor, utzoo!utcsri}!unicus!craig	(dumb uucp)
	mnetor!unicus!craig@uunet.uu.net		(dumb arpa)