The removal of rent control only applied to new tenants. He was limited to a city controlled yearly mandated increase, the entire time I was there. He also couldn't kick me out unless he moved into the apartment himself for some period of time.
He also had to put my deposit into an interest bearing account and was required to pay me that interest. The rental increase and payment was a ritual I went through yearly with him and he always delayed giving me the interest as long as he could by law.
2-3x+ more rent is enough reason for a landlord to want to push someone out in a competitive market like Berkeley. There is always a stream of new tenants because it is a college town and limited rental housing is available.
Yes, but only until the current tenant leaves. Which gave that landlord all the incentives to make the current tenant leave, as evident by the half-assed repairs and other slumlord-like behaviors that the parent comment mentioned.
Yeah, so it actively incentivizes neglecting maintenance duties and driving out the current tenants rather than offering them to renew their lease at the market rate. Sounds like a terrible law.
That's the downside of rent control. Rent ends up being stable and predictable for tenants, but it reduces the landlord's incentive to fix thing when they break and to make improvements (though many rent control laws, including SF's, still allow landlords to pass some of the cost of capital improvements to renters).
Even when rent control continues to be active, landlords have an incentive to want to get their tenants out, because (at least in SF), a new tenant can be charged market rate when they move in (and then that rate is locked in with limited yearly increases until they leave).
When rent control in Berkeley ended, but existing tenants grandfathered in, the landlords were incentivized even more than usual to do things to make a tenant want to leave, since then they'd have a completely non-rent-controlled unit again.
It's not only bad behavior on the landlords' side. Tenants are incentivized to hold onto the unit as long as possible, even if they want or need to move out for a while. They'll often illegally sublet the place and hope the landlord doesn't come by to check on them until after they move back in. But they're also in some ways trapped: they may want to move, but know that they'll face a huge rent increase in their new place, so they stay put.
Honestly I can't really blame landlords or tenants for their bad behavior under rent control; the rules around it only tend to provide one good outcome: rent stable and increases are predictable. Other outcomes are usually negative, and that's an inherent property of the system. But that one good outcome is often good enough to justify keeping rent control around.
That that has anything to do with rent control is an absolute myth. Two counter examples are Sydney and Melbourne, both don't have rent control, Australia has big incentives for investing in housing (tax reductions if you don't live in the house). Both cities have seen an explosion of rents (10% year on year is not uncommon) and a building boom of cheap apartments that are only rented out via Airbnb. I can tell from experience that landlords do the absolute minimum they are legally required (mostly even less) and tenants are afraid to complain because they need the references when moving.
When I moved in, the pricing was fair, if not a bit high.
Over the years, cost of living increases for whatever reasons and now the rent I'm paying seems low.
Maybe the solution is to allow landlords to have larger increases that match changes in COL, but that is effectively the same as getting rid of rent control.
Right. The whole point is you said they got rid of it, but they didn't. It was still in effect and causing problems in your situation.
Your proposed solution is now to get rid of rent control, which is what they had supposedly already done. But I agree. Seems like (actually) getting rid of rent control would have been a good move.
The removal of rent control only applied to new tenants. He was limited to a city controlled yearly mandated increase, the entire time I was there. He also couldn't kick me out unless he moved into the apartment himself for some period of time.
He also had to put my deposit into an interest bearing account and was required to pay me that interest. The rental increase and payment was a ritual I went through yearly with him and he always delayed giving me the interest as long as he could by law.
2-3x+ more rent is enough reason for a landlord to want to push someone out in a competitive market like Berkeley. There is always a stream of new tenants because it is a college town and limited rental housing is available.