I've said this before (and caught flak for it) but I think the solution to this is to apply a heavy additional tax to vacant homes (as defined as any home that isn't occupied by a permanent resident for more than 6 months a year), and increase the tax exponentially for each residence beyond the first owned by the same company or individual.

At some point, you make it so expensive to keep unoccupied properties that they're better off letting people live there for free than continuing to let them go unoccupied. Use all of the proceeds from this tax to assist homeless people or build new dense housing developments.

"But Kobold, what about soandso with their summer home?" If you can afford a second home, you can afford to pay a bit more tax on it to benefit the public good.

"But Kobold, a lot of those homes that are vacant are run-down, or are in places nobody actually wants to live!" Doesn't matter. If they're vacant, tax them. Use the money to build dense housing in the places where people do want to live. If the place is too run-down to be occupied, the owner can tear it down and do something else with it.

So you're saying granny would be fine with a 100% return on her investment at $36 for an offer? No? Shocked I say, shocked.

Granny is part of the problem. Not the biggest part of the pie, but still guilty.

Grandma is not the problem.

You can't go blaming the institutions for the high cost of living when it is very clearly this one anonymous old person who isn't giving this other anonymous young person a sweetheart deal out of misplaced nostalgia.

Fun Fact: There are 16 million vacant homes nationwide.

Okay, but a bunch of them are in the Rust Belt, where de-industrialization eviscerated the economy and caused a mass exodus to the Gulf Coast and the Mountain West in pursuit of lower wage service sector and sales employment.

I suppose you're going to claim that the wholesale restructuring of the manufacturing economy was the fault of a handful of 90s-era Wall Street bankers and Corporate Executives, rather than millions of Boomer-era suburbanites with pocket change in their retirement accounts 40 years ago?

Likely. Fucking. Story. This is just bigotry against the 1% is what it is.

I’ve never subscribed to this generational hatred, as true as it is that the boomers voted for this shit, on account of it’s clearly a deliberate psyop “divide and conquer” campaign. It’s as obvious as the crack epidemic or redlining.

By remaining invisible, the billionaires avoid having the finger pointed at them. We only point at each other.

Guess what that generation bought into and voted for for decades.