My Russian Friend and Basic Economics

My last post was about hiking Mt. Whitney with my coworkers. The day before our hike we drove to Cottonwood Lakes to acclimate. I had the chance to have a conversation with a coworker from Russia (She's now a U.S. citizen). I found her journey to our country very interesting. I'll share one tidbit.

I almost never met her as she planned on living in New York. Thanks to laws in New York that were intended to protect young families with small children from being evicted (landlords are required to give one years notice), her family (husband and their young infant) were unable to find housing so they moved to the west coast. It turns out that no one wants to rent to young families as the law makes it too hard to get rid of them. Renting to good families is just not worth the risk of getting stuck with deadbeats for a whole year.

It's interesting that I just finished reading Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell and he pointed out that housing laws always have the opposite effect of their original intentions.

My friend also mentioned something about Vladimir Putin and high taxes. It was rather ominous. I'll ask her again to get the story straight.