Second in a series
Re “Rent Control Weather Report: Snow, Ice and Slippery Walking”
[img]1305|right|Andy Weissman||no_popup[/img]“Twenty percent enthusiasm and 80 percent disinterest” is the way one City Hall veteran described the City Council’s almost unanimous distaste for considering rent control in Culver City.
On what grounds do four of the five persons on the dais object?
Andy Weissman, senior member of the Council, agreed that it is unrelated to regulation.
“Culver City is predominantly single-family residents,” he said. “I don’t know the breakdown, but I will speculate it is the opposite of what Santa Monica was (70 to 80 percent) when they enacted rent control by ballot (following the 1978 passage of Prop. 13).”
Is that lopsidedness reason to reject the concept?
“Depends on what you are looking to achieve,” Mr. Weissman said. “If you are trying to encourage development of multi-family buildings, then you want to enact regulations and promote policies that would encourage that to happen.
“I happen to believe rent control is a disincentive to the construction of new dwellings.
“If you take a look at the history of rent control, I don’t think any place in California has enacted a rent control regulation in perhaps the last 15 years.
“My information is that 15 communities out of 3,000 incorporated communities have rent control.
“Few of them have imposed limits on rent,” Mr. Weissman said. “Most are much like Culver City in terms of the mediation nature of rent control (with landlord-tenant mediation boards).
“No. 1, I am not persuaded it is good policy.
“No. 2, I am not persuaded it is helpful in terms of bringing on additional (multi-unit) housing for renters. Historically, that has meant four units or more.”
Further, said the sixth-year Councilman, the subject was turning too esoteric. “It is hard to have this kind of talk absent an ordinance,” he said.
“If you had an ordinance that only applied rent control to new construction, you never are going to get new construction. If you are going to apply rent control to existing buildings, who is going to be covered and what are the parameters?
“It depends.”
(To be continued)
