I just can't believe Roberta Gutierrez. Every letter she writes is
so full of hate and spite toward landlords and other readers.
Obviously, she stands to lose a great deal if this rent-control
measure fails. She must have once been paying really low rent.
I have my own views on some of the propaganda she has been pouring
out. First of all, she should really learn to discern the difference
between monopolistic or oligopolistic commodities like power and
gasoline. With monopolies, you only have one producer, and with
oligopolies you have relatively few producers of a certain commodity.
The fewer the producers, the greater chance for abuse and the greater
the need for regulation.
Then she needs to learn the difference between the former two and
free-market commodities and producers. Housing in Glendale is far
from a monopoly, as she would have everyone believe, and it is not
even close to an oligopoly. Housing in Glendale, with 40,000
landlords, is definitely a free-market commodity.
There is nothing about price-fixing with Glendale's landlords,
just as there is nothing about price-fixing with Glendale's other
small businesses. Don't forget that Glendale's landlords do not speak
with one voice, nor do Glendale's businesses. They are all just
independent business people who are trying to make a living for
themselves and are doing so in a supply-and-demand environment. The
higher rents have come about because it is so much nicer to live in
Glendale and more people want to do so than in any of the adjacent
areas. Pasadena is even nicer and more expensive.
I am sure that drivers on freeways are not in collusion, yet they
all seem to slow down and jam whenever there is an accident or too
many other drivers on the same road. Is this collusion, or the nature
of the freeway and its drivers? Rents are lower in Eagle Rock and
Atwater. Is this collusion on the part of the landlords to keep the
rents lower, or does the market for lower-class apartments demand
lower prices?
Ms. Gutierrez has claimed the apartment rates in Glendale result
from price-fixing, not the free market. How are these prices fixed?
She states that a free market has already been proved to be absent
from Glendale housing market. Is she seeing things, or is she hearing
things? I know of no agreement among Glendale's landlords to do such
a thing. I think that Roberta Gutierrez, not Mr. Fan, needs a lesson
in reality, the way she just states falsehoods as fact with no offer
of proof whatsoever.
