this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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Corps and foreign investors shouldn't be able to own housing (multi unit should be co-op/market rate nonprofits)
Individuals should not be able to own more than 5 homes. (The number is semi arbitrary, but at a certain point it is very clearly hoarding, and therefore shouldn't be allowed)
AirBNB and similar should be heavily regulated. (They turn permanent residences into short term, which reduces capacity, and drives up prices all around)
Shift to a land value tax system as the primary means of tax collection. What few landlords/scalpers exist after the above changes will have even less room to breathe. And it would punish vacancy, which would put pressure to keep as much housing available as possible.
There may need to be some exceptions. But if changes like this were to occur, we wouldn't have this problem.
No reason whatsoever anyone should own 5 "homes" (at that point they are not homes, they are a commodity).
Housing is a human right, and it needs to be entirely decommodified.
Preach.
Housing is a human right.
Private land ownership violates that human right.
All land should be held in trust for the people as a whole and managed by the government for the benefit of the people. Including the houses and apartments on that land.
We should not have private homeowners. We should not have private landlords. We should have socialized housing, just like we should have socialized medicine. Apartment buildings and neighborhoods should be managed by tenant associations, with strict legal limits on their authority over individual tenants, and government facilitators to provide expert advice on building management and keep meetings running smoothly.
But we are a long way from implementing that.
I think I would swap the word government for collective, but otherwise I completely agree, and yeah, we're a long way away unfortunately. But we can hope, and inform others, and join/invest in projects that are working towards that end!
The government should be the collective. The fact that it isn't is one of the roots of the problem, and the FPTP electoral systems of most western countries keeps it that way.
I don't disagree, but I do think the anarchist idea of a government (which is what I personally had in mind) is so far removed from what most people today can envisage when they hear that word, that it's still worth differentiating.
But consider all the investment banks that would irreparably harm!
Each successive property beyond one should add an additional 10% to the property taxes. The owner may list them in any order, but you pay 110% for the second property and 200% for the 11th
A land value tax would be a good idea as well, especially if its the main form of tax collection. Each successive property would automatically, drastically increase the cost.
It would become a defacto tax on the rich, while helping to prevent hoarding. Two birds one stone.
...And the net result would be that they would charge more on rent. And since taxing at higher rates would deter people from building more rental properties, the housing shortage would get worse.
Housing is a public good and should be funded as such.
That would be great! Except that cities refuse to do that, and no one wants to put high density housing anywhere near their cute, historic neighborhood.
If you can build the political will to steamroll the NIMBYs, I'm all for it.
Any solution to the housing crisis necessarily would require the political will to do that. There's no getting around it.
But yeah, I think we more or less reached a point of agreement. We need to change the culture, it must become more collectivist. We gotta finally start caring for one another.
The problem isn't political will per se, but specifically steamrolling local NIMBYs. The people with the most political power and will tend to push high density housing out of more desirable areas and into less desirable areas. If you wanted to, for instance, but a 100 unit building in Ukrainian Village or Wicker Park in Chicago, you'd have a really stiff fight on your hands from local property owners who want to keep their neighborhood all brownstones. OTOH, if you want to demo a square block near Garfield Park and build there--and I wouldn't recommend doing that--you'll have the local alderman holding a golden shovel for the groundbreaking.
Developers are not generally landlords. They want to build and are fully capable of setting up building co-ops. (They already do it) So fucking with landlords does not in any way mean less housing available.
Fine. Cap the rents and tie them to inflation. These fuckers are greedier than literal dragons, and I'm down for some dragon slaying.
Okay, now you have waiting lists like they do in Copenhagen.
Pretty much every economist will tell you that rent control creates disincentives to building more housing.
Then we lift the restrictions that Clinton put on government housing, and increase the supply.
I don't care what the racists trained by the Chicago school of economics say, the real world has only proven them right when the rich are pushing on the scales.
Keynes is correct, and 2020 proved that far too well, to the point that the rich started screaming about their wage slaves.
Great! I'm all for gov't increasing housing supply! But, frankly, most of the pushback from building affordable, high-density housing is coming from the local level. If we build high-density, affordable (e.g., low-income only, versus mixed-income) housing in it's own area, rather than integrating it into existing communities, we're only building the slums of the future. As it stands, well-off communities, even in areas that are heavily Democratic (such as, most of California), have been strongly opposed to locating such housing in their neighborhoods, and do everything they can to prevent it.
The YIMBY movement is gaining traction in IB and San Diego
I'm curious what areas are seeing the gain in YIMBY; I have a hard time thinking that any of it is coming from La Jolla. And yeah, San Diego really needs more high-density housing. I lived there for a few years in the early 90s, and there really wasn't much at the time.
I live in IB so I don't hear much from La Jolla. We've had several high density low income proposals pass the SD and IB city councils in the last couple years.
An easier approach would be to turn every apartment building into a housing co-op.
Capitalist for-profit housing simply should not exist.
That would also be a good idea. Not sure about the easier part though.
Agreed
I can imagine ways of doing that without too much friction. Building residents would have to buy out the building though which many won't want to do
I'd even say no more than two properties. Make people apply for a permit to own more than that and put extreme limits on the reasons they could be successful depending on the current market.
I don't have a problem with that either. But yeah, the number itself is semi arbitrary. It should be voted on really.
The vast majority of 'good' landlords are people who were sketchy about investing in stock markets. As they rightfully should be because it requires infinite growth to keep people retiring without serious wage redistribution. But let's kick that football down the road more.
Most of them are old and elderly. There's no way the government forces private land owners to sell off anytime soon though. Let alone the difference in taxing/sales of land ownership vs home ownership. A hard cap on total homes owned would be nice though. People really out to diversify their savings and equity is a huge one.
There's so much good that could be done that starts failing when defacto mini government coops start up though. You'll have a hard time finding the difference between Coop and government owned housing but you'll see people lambast government ownership like we've already seen in this thread lol.
My city levies land tax on any land that isn't the owner's private residence
That though really just increases rent, even if rent is unfair already
They have just also added a thing where you don't cop land tax if you rent out a place at sufficiently below market rate
Let's go with one home, then we can consider allowing more. Extreme? Yes. But I have no sympathy for the wealthy folks. Sorry, not sorry.