Why Rents Are So High

In Park Merced, the large San Francisco residential complex where I live, 30% of the units are vacant. More would be vacant if not for Section 8 housing subsidies, with which government pays most of the rent for low-income tenants. Squatters live in some vacant units. Cars and homes are being broken into. The place is going downhill. Last year, Park Merced ran a real life experiment on rents. A small courtyard one block from me has eight units around it, and six were vacant. Squatters were moving in, cars were being robbed. Management was asking about $3400 / month for a 2 BR apartment. In 2022, for some reason, they lowered the rents to the low $2000s. The units filled with working families; the squatters had to leave. It’s a much nicer place to live now. As this story shows, all management would have to do to restore the neighborhood and protect their housing stock is reduce rents, to reflect what people can afford to pay. But they won’t. As the time of this writing, their web site officially asks $3200/month for a 2 bedroom, a “special deal available only for a week.” Whatever happened to supply and demand? When supply is low and demand is high, prices should rise, so more stuff gets produced. When demand is low, sellers lower prices to attract buyers (in this case, renters.) Isn’t that how capitalism works? If people can’t afford your rent, you lower it. But here in America, home prices, apartment and office rents <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-02-20/rents-increases-across-us" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">keep rising</a>, even though people can’t afford them. What is going on? <a href="https://aninjusticemag.com/why-rents-are-so-high-880f5c77e353">Visit Now</a>