this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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I mean, one good long term solution is either ban or heavily, heavily tax corporate ownership of single family homes. And heavily tax short term vacation rentals. Basically force all the companies that are buying up blocks and blocks of single family housing to sell.
Then, take a look at zoning laws. I have no experience with this side, but they're probably often a barrier to creating medium or high density housing. Which we're gonna need a lot of in the near future.
Apparently foreign home ownership is a big issue in Canada, so I have to assume it's also a (smaller) issue in the US.
Basically, the issue I see is not that there isn't enough housing. It's that corporate greed is pricing people out of their neighborhoods and then the houses are sitting empty because they're barely worth $150k, but the "market" says they can be listed at $400k, and not many people can afford that.
Capping rental rates to mortgages is the best solution. Whatever the mortgage is, you can't charge a penny more than that.
Any tax burden will be passed to the renter without a cap on rental rates.
A use it or lose it policy would also be effective. Rent or sell an unoccupied house or it is turned over to the city council at half tax assessment value.
You need to have teeth, actual losses to encourage them to move.
capping rents to the mortgage means you can only rent out a property at a loss, because you can’t recoup repairs, maintenance, utilities, vacancy, or administrative fees through rent. this effectively makes being a landlord illegal, which you’d might as well do outright if that’s the objective.