"it runs counter to the goals of a stable and healthy society to allow landlords to force people out of their homes arbitrarily"
I don't think you'll get anyone many people that disagree with the premise of stability. The devil is in the details of implementation.
Rent control causes as many problems (or more) than it solves. You get much larger price swings in the rental market, for example, because the effective market size is highly constrained.
SF's rent control only applies to buildings built prior to 1979, so rent control is not what's stopping developers from building new apartment buildings.
It still is about 70% rent control, if I remember correctly. So, even before construction capacity/permit issues, 100% of the people who want to move to SF are competing on price for 30% of the inventory. Naturally, the people willing to pay the most for those units get them, so you get massive rent inflation and huge incentives to cater to the luxury market.
> So, even before construction capacity/permit issues...
Which -let's be real- is nearly 100% of the cause of the insane rents in the area. [0]
> ...100% of the people who want to move to SF are competing on price for 30% of the inventory.
You make it sound like people never move out of a Rent Stabilized apartment. I know this not to be true. In my building, we get at least one entire-apartment vacancy every two or three months. Those apartments that are going for $3k+ per month that I talk about? They're often covered by Rent Stabilization. :)
Also, remember that SF's Rent Stabilization is the reset-to-any-rate-upon-loss-of-original-tenants flavor of rent control. So, once any Stabilized apartment loses all of its original tenants, [2] the landlord is free to set the rental rate to any rate.
[2] Known as Master Tenants, these are the first set of folks whose names were on the lease signed that established the base rate of that unit for that occupancy period. Tenants added after the initial lease signing do not count as Master Tenants.
I strongly urge you to make a study of the fucked-up residential construction situation in SF and the SFBA before making any claims about the effects of Rent Control/Stabilization on housing prices in the area. :)
Oh yes, SF's lack of new capacity is the driving factor in rental pricing, no argument. Holistically, rent control, density restrictions, and poor public transit all combine to form the final price.
And, -holistically- severe hunger killed the starving man who just got shot in the gut, struck by a speeding bus, then set on fire.
But, reasonable people see that starvation is an insignificant factor in the man's demise, so -if they bring it up at all- they bring it up only in passing. :)
I don't think you'll get anyone many people that disagree with the premise of stability. The devil is in the details of implementation.
Rent control causes as many problems (or more) than it solves. You get much larger price swings in the rental market, for example, because the effective market size is highly constrained.
No system is perfect, obviously.