&gt; ...nor humour a &quot;tu quoque&quot; contest.<p>Awful sly of you to indirectly make the claim that I was calling you a hypocrite. I&#x27;m not. I&#x27;m declaring that <i>everyone</i> who lives in a governed district is a beneficiary of the state&#x27;s ability to restrict supply of one thing or another. This <i>includes</i> landlords who might have the &quot;value&quot; of their &quot;investment&quot; inflated due to restricted supply.<p>&gt; They made an investment in buying [the land]...<p>Yes. Agreed.<p>&gt; ...and improving the land.<p>No. No, they did not.<p>They paid someone else to get access to the revenue stream that comes from the people living in the building that was constructed roughly <i>one hundred</i> years <i>before</i> they made the purchase. Additionally, the building was constructed more than <i>fifty</i> years <i>before</i> $CURRENT_LANDLORD-2 made his purchase. <i>Neither</i> of them fronted the money and took on the risk to build the <i>only</i> improvement on the land.<p>What&#x27;s more, $CURRENT_LANDLORD&#x27;s negligence is <i>lowering</i> the value of the property they purchased. Vermin infestation throughout the building and trash accumulation in public areas [0] are now not-uncommon sights. Essential building services are unreliable and not-infrequently unavailable due to failure to perform regular preventative maintenance.<p>Are you using some definition of &quot;$CURRENT_LANDLORD is improving the land.&quot; that remains true when the actions that the landowner takes both damage the pre-existing building on the property and lower its value, actual or otherwise?<p>&gt; Not necessary for my point.<p>It <i>really</i> seems like your point is not valid, for the situation that a renter not-infrequently finds himself in in San Francisco. [1] Because the demand for rental housing is so high, landlords can often get away with failing to perform even the legally required maintenance and upkeep and <i>still</i> have people breaking down their doors to rent their vacant apartments.<p>I don&#x27;t see how one can -with a straight face- make the claim that a property owner is adding value to a property when they aren&#x27;t even performing the maintenance required to adequately counteract the natural forces of entropy.<p>Do you now understand what I mean when I say &quot;$CURRENT_LANDLORD has done nothing to improve the value of their property.&quot;?<p>[0] Due to not-infrequent failure of building management to swap out the full garbage, recycling, and composting bins with empty ones.<p>[1] Your argument may be (and probably is) totally valid in <i>other</i> situations. San Francisco&#x27;s housing market (rental or otherwise) is a special bucket of suck.