IMHO, the answer is simple.
No corporation may own more than X single family or multifamily (up to 4 family per building) housing units, other than for occupation by its employees, for more than 120 days. Any housing units owned for more than 120 days are taxed at a rate of 50% of their fair market value per year.
Watch how fast companies like Zillow that tried to get rich fast by ‘playing the housing market’ dump houses on the market.
I’m invested in real estate, and I want this to happen even though it’ll hurt me economically. Real estate is horrifically overvalued, and corporations owning huge numbers of single family homes / small multifamily homes are a big part of why.
I’m all for investing to make money. Some things should be considered public resources, not vehicles for investment. Land and health are among them.
It’s completely written by AI, but ChatGPT makes a good point.
No…. The immigrants stole them all
This article claims a lot of these are foreclosures and banks don’t want to be landlords
Massive property tax increase. Owner-occupants are exempted from that tax.
As soon as a bank initiates foreclosure proceedings, they owe the full, non-exempt tax rate. That stick gives them a strong incentive to work with their borrower.
That article also talks about a lot of the properties being tear downs. It’s easy to say that a homeless person would find just about anything a step up, but realistically it has to be habitable, salable, maintainable. No one would want the liability of a below standard house, nor the PR hit of giving a junk house
landlords
the easy way to solve this is TO GIVE THE DAMNED HOUSES AWAY instead of retaining ownership of property that could house people. don’t want to be landlords? give it the fuck away
Corollary: this is also why we have squatters rights.
throughout the US?
if so, they don’t seem to be used successfully that I see; really the only squatters I’ve encountered were the pack of meth heads who moved into a neighbors house while they were working overseas. claimed they had a lease, even. And even they were gone in under a week.
just curious, thanks.
throughout the US?
Well The US is a patchwork of laws, so mileage may vary.
Still, perhaps we need to strengthen them. They are in the spirit of “this is who actually lives and contributes here”
Squatters shouldn’t have rights wtf. That’s not their property, lol it’s like lemme me just steal some shit from the store, they’re not using it.
There was a case study about how bizarre squatter rights existed in NY if the owner was away for 30 days and there so many cases of primary residence people going on extended vacation, and coming back and then they become homeless because some asshole just decided to move in until the court finally reviews these frivelous cases.
There are major things wrong with housing, but squatter rights are effectively allowing you to steal from others. They should look into limiting hoarding and lvt which has been shown to be more effective in places like Singapore.
Squatters shouldn’t have rights wtf. That’s not their property, lol it’s like lemme me just steal some shit from the store, they’re not using it.
If the owners don’t figure that someone moved in on the order of years then clearly they don’t care either. Thus the squatters have a right to claim the property.
As other two have said. The carrying costs for banks is just too low to incentivize liquidity in housing supply. Put them on the market and watch home prices and rent fall
it’s it a solution or more that they’re are abandoned areas with empty houses in places with no jobs or investments which aren’t for for a community?
Yep. The ‘housing crisis’ is a load of bullshit.
LAND VALUE TAX
Legally disallow speculation on human needs.
I feel like this is already possible through homestead exemptions. You can even extend this to higher density rental complexes (more incentive for an apartment complex to be fully occupied). Unfortunately this exemption is tiny in some places.
Isn’t this property tax? Which I believe every state has. There should probably be a larger homestead discount though. It’s nothing where I live.
it’s a tax on land.
not a tax on property or improvements on the land.
often the idea being you incentivize development because the developed land is taxed at the same or lower rate than undeveloped land.
a conventional property tax taxes the land and the improvements equally. this often disincentivized development because developing the land means paying more taxes.
But doesn’t development increase the land value as well? In high demand places the land value is the significant factor in the property anyways.
Development of surrounding land increases land value yes, but the idea is that since the landowner didn’t do that development themselves, they shouldn’t be able to profit from it through increased value of their own land. “Land value” is kind of an amorphous though, another way to think about it is that we want to incentivize the most economically optimal use of land in high demand areas, thus we should tax all land proportional to demand (measured via price) to encourage those landowners who have undeveloped or under-utilized land relative to demand to use it.
(note this is counter-intuitively pro-environmental because it applies most to land with high demand, e.g. cities, not forest or farmland, and if cities can be successfully densified to satisfy housing demand, pressure to sprawl can be reduced, increasing those lands left to nature)
Ok so the idea is we want high density land development to be cheaper relative to low density land development to encourage urban living?
It’s still unclear to me why land value tax vs property tax is different in this scenario.
If the land surrounding an underdeveloped parcel rises in value, so too does the property tax. Do you mean that we should decrease the tax on improvements? I think this can be done with taxation based on things like number of tenants or businesses (less tax for more density). Otherwise you just end up with lower density luxury condos everywhere.
And by economically optimal, do you mean optimal for the most people or for the most profit? These often differ.
The other people didn’t mention it, but this comes from the economic school called Georgism. If you want to know more that keyword should help you out.
Thanks, it’s good to learn. Not sure I agree completely.
I’ve said time and time again that “building more houses” is not the solution.
The problem is resource hoarding. Regulate the real estate monopolies. Stricter bans on AirBnBs and second vacation homes. Rent control properties. And renovate buildings that aren’t up to code.
Outside of extremely dense cities, it’s never, ever been a population issue. It’s a class issue.
Massively increase property taxes. Exempt owner-occupants from those increases.
You want a second home, you’re going to be paying the full, punitive tax rate on one of them.
Just one more suburb bro I swear, it’s all we need just one more and it’ll be fixed
I’ve said time and time again that “building more houses” is not the solution.
I mean, it’s also been said that a lot of these empty houses are in rural/suburban neighborhoods outside of dying industrial centers. We’re effectively talking about “Ghost Towns”, with no social services and a deteriorating domestic infrastructure, that people are deliberately abandoning.
And we’re stacking that up against the homeless encampments that appear in large, dense, urban environments where social services are (relatively) robust and utilities operate at full capacity around the clock.
Picking people up from under the I-10 overpass and moving them to
doesn’t address homelessness as a structural problem. It just shuttles people around the state aimlessly and hopes you can squirrel them away where your voters won’t see them anymore.
At some point, you absolutely do need to build more apartment blocks and rail corridors and invest in local/state/federal public services again, such that you can gainfully employ (or at least comfortably retire) people with no future economic prospects. You can’t just take folks out to shacks in the boonies and say “Homelessness Resolved!”
Sounds like all those places need are people to live in them.
It’s a win-win.
A lot of those places suck and they’re not going to turn into vibrant cultural centers with social services quickly.
They need economic activity to be livable. Shoving broke people onto a reservation doesn’t accomplish that.
They create the economic activity.
More people living in an area means there’s more to do and more people to do it.
On average, each additional person contributes more than they take out.
…But nobody wants to live there.
You could give a bunch of homeless people housing, but there’s simply no structure around it. They have no money, and there’s no jobs. There’s no services around. They won’t be much better off than homeless in a big city tbh. Might be WORSE off.
There needs to be available housing near the places where there’s actually things to do, jobs to hold, services to use.
Worst part is, I bet a LOT of those ghots towns are suburban, not urban - so it makes it more difficult and expensive to build up a new community there. Everything is spaced out
Stalin thought Siberia needed a lot of people living there. Look how that turned out.
Forgive my ignorance; I don’t know much about Siberia other than it is desolate and not much fun. How did that turn out?
You need jobs near those places first. The locations are dying because of lack of industry.
The people who move there will create jobs and demand.
That’s really not how it works. If you’re homeless you’re not in a position to be a job creator.
More people living in a location means there is more work to be done and more people to do it.
Each additional person, on average, can contribute more than they take out.
More people living in a location means there is more work to be done and more people to do it.
If that were universally applicable the towns wouldn’t be dying to begin with. The houses are empty because there’s a lack of available work.
Homeless people, on average, contribute less to society than housed people, on average. Generally multiple societal structural failures and bad luck are major contributions to a person ending up homeless, but their own genetic- and nuture-driven characteristics play a role, too, and having a higher physical and mental disability burden than the average human is common.
Also, living remotely often means subsistence is a major part of how people get on, and subsistence is an intensely knowledge- and skill-based task highly specific to locale. Hunting in rural Alaska is not immediately transferable to hunting in Greenland, and dumping someone in rural Montana is not going to poof make them an expert gatherer.
I’ve said the same thing. More housing will just be bought by more speculators. I also think a massive tax on owning more than 5 properties would be helpful as well. Put the revenue from that into affordable housing subsidies.
It doesn’t need to be an either-or situation. We can attack the problem from multiple sides, since there’s isn’t a silver bullet. New housing absolutely has to be part of it, but obviously it’s not super helpful if the new stock isn’t affordable or practical for average people.
Counterproductive regulations (restrictive zoning, vetocracy setups) have prevented environmentally sensible and affordable housing from being added in sufficient quantities in most of the US for a long time. We have more people living in smaller households than we used to; it just doesn’t math without adding new stock.
We also need way more investment in mental health and rehab services.
It’s also the huge amount of housing that’s built that’s not affordable. We have had 5 neighborhoods built within 4 miles of my house over the past 5 years. Nothing is below 500k starting price.
that’s because you can’t build homes for cheaper than that.
developers aren’t going to charge 300K for a home that cost them 400K to build
They actually can build homes cheaper than that, there’s a certain price point where they feel they’re making the kind of profit they want which is basically the cost of a older home profit-wise. There’s a recent article that came out that I’m can’t find right now but I read it just a couple months ago that talked about the 400 to $500,000 price range is the profit margin that builders want to make. That means they’re probably making 20 to 30% profit. And while they can build cheaper homes they make less profit so they are not motivated to.
I know it’s not going to happen under this regime but it seems like the solution is to offer tax breaks, subsidies, or whatever we think might give the developers some incentive to build lower income housing.
OK. you go develop those homes then.
since you’re such an expert and seem to think a 10% margin is totally worthwhile?
I run a company, and it often is. Think about it this way. If you sell a 250k home,10% would be 25k. A developer often sells an entire neighborhood, so let’s say conservatively 30 homes. That’s 750,000$. If that’s not enough profit to keep building, well, you now know the problem with our society.
The land is expensive. Every time you buy and build or rebuild you want to make a profit off of your investment and effort so it goes up. Even if the structure is crap and you intend to tear it down and rebuild the seller still expects to be paid for the structure. The only way to make land more affordable is to build upwards and make condos/apts and increase the number of residents per unit area.
Building more housing is the solution, even if those homes largely go to the upper middle class and wealthy. Building new homes primarily for well off people isn’t a historic anomaly, it’s the norm. If you’re already building a house, it doesn’t take that much more to add some luxury features to make it appeal to the high end of the market. This is how it’s always been. Historically, the affordable housing of today is the luxury housing of yesterday.
Preventing new home construction doesn’t prevent neighborhoods from gentrifying. You just end up with yuppies living in newly renovated former tenements.
seriously. poor people don’t buy new homes. rich people do. i grew up poor. every house we lived in was 30+ years old. poor people buy homes that are old.
the issue is there are no more old homes anymore because we don’t build enough new homes. so now rich people buy old homes and push our the poor people who can’t afford any home.
people like me, making 150K and now going into poor communities and buying up the homes for ourselves because we can’t afford anything newer. all the old homes in the richer towns are crazy expensive, and the new ones are 2x the cost of the old ones.
new constructed home in my city is about 2-3million. a 50 year old house is like 1-1.5 million. a newly constructed home in a poor shit down is 500K. a old home in a shit town is like 350K. I can afford a 350K house. i can’t afford one that’s 500K or more.
people move to wear they can afford homes.
Fixing the supply problem fixes the hoarding problem. Housing is an attractive investment because it’s scarce. Once you build enough, investors will invest in something else.
An excise tax on multiple house owners would be good in my opinion. And make the percentage go up with the number houses an individual or entity owns.
Are you including landlords? Most people with multiple houses have them to rent out: they’re not empty.
Some percentage of people have a second “empty” house for vacations or as snowbirds, but I imagine the number with more is vanishingly small.
I like the variation we have now, but more so. Let’s increase property taxes substantially, but also increase the residential exemption significantly.
- Low end houses become close to free of taxes
- the average house is taxed the same
- but taxes on high end houses and multiple houses are higher
- so overall property taxes go way up
I didn’t say anything about empty houses. I just said houses. Fuck landlords. And if you can afford an extra house that you don’t live in all the time, you can afford extra taxes on that house.
Oh and yeah, we should absolutely lower the taxes on single occupancy homes. EAT THE FUCKING RICH
Exactly this
except you’re wrong.
housing production has been below population growth for over two decades.
when covid happened rents in my city dropped 50% overnight. why? because nobody wanted to live there anymore.
demand is everything. prices are low where demand is low, and prices are high where demand is high.
renovation is often more expensive than new housing. what needs to happen is for all the SFH crap to be zoned to multi family and for 3-5 story condo buildings to replace them. boom housing crisis solved.
also you need a vacancy rate of 8% or greater or more to bring prices down. the vacancy rate in my city is like 1.3% only way to get a massive vacancy rate is a economic crisis or to build more housing than there is demand.
No, you’re just wrong. You can’t twist reality to fit some niche ideological fantasy that you find sexy.
The reality is that statistics show that if we took all the vacant houses including all those that are inhabitable, under renovations, all the second, third, whatever homes, and we took all the investment properties as well and made them all immediately available, there would still NOT be enough houses to meet the current demand.
The reality is that we have very nonsensical and outdated zoning as well as restrictive construction process that strangle output. We need to reform our zoning laws and expedite construction to pump the market with many new housing units as possible to not just meet, but also exceed demand. That’s the only way to bring house prices down in a genuine way while also giving people homes that they actually want to live in places that they want to live in.
Property developers well never, not in a million years, build enough new housing to make their industry significantly less profitable.
The only solution is local government building social housing and being as good landlord at low prices. Good luck with that, America!
Where did you get your information from? Please cite some reputable sources. I’m pretty sure you’re !confidently_incorrect@lemmy.world.
Where do you have those statistics from? Because all sources I’ve seen draw an image like this. where even the states with the lowest amount of empty houses per homeless person still have more than 5:
https://www.mortgagecalculator.org/images/us-homeless-crisis.jpg
How many of these are actually habitable? I would assume a large portion are either too dilapidated or under renovations.
I very much doubt that nearly a third of the housing stock is vacant for no reason, especially when it’s a seller’s market. The statistics for people who own more than home or buildings with more than unit are not enough to explain the difference. I’m skeptical of these random no name authors on websites like medium.
I know people here want a sexy quick solution, but the reality is that this country’s housing stock is too small, too old, and is not keeping up with demand at all. The one and only solution is to reform zoning laws, expedite housing construction, and pump the market with so many new units that it not only meets demands, but exceeds to the point where prices fall and we have a buyer’s market.
What a bizarre question. You know “homeless” means sleeping on the street, right?
sending the homeless to delapidated abandoned towns is more a genocide than a solution
27.4 multiplied by the number of homeless people, not 33% of all housing. A recent guess of number of homeless people was 600k, although that is a guess
And habitable is a relative term. I assume someone might not mind subpar housing over sleeping on a bench in the snow
They might not mind the subpar housing, but they would for sure mind the lack of food pantries and medical services in the places the empty housing exists. If it’s not dying rural town that completely lacks those things, it’s sprawling suburb or vacation community that requires a car to access them.
You go to any country where people have freedom to do whatever the hell they want and you’ll see them living in any kind of house. what they call dilapidated in the US is just normal bullshit.
they’ve got so many fucking laws and regulations in the United States preventing people from being able to build things preventing people from being able to live inside of the place that they work preventing people from having housing preventing people from handing out sandwiches to homeless people. the United States is an authoritarian hell hole
I run a condo building and there’s about half a dozen apartments in the building that have been sitting vacant for as long as I’ve been here for about 5 years now. The owners don’t even live in the country. Just apartments sitting there unused for years
they are an investment.
here in boston, chinese people buy up apartments for their children to go to college, years ahead of time. several vacant buildings near my own place. even if their kid doesn’t go to school here, it’s still an asset that appreciates. chinese landlord that lives half a globe away doesn’t care about renting it out either. it’s just a place to park their money.
As long as we refuse to decouple housing from a tool of speculation, we will not address affordable housing.
most people’s wealth is tied up in housing. so if you decouple that you will make most americans much poorer
I think it’s fine to use it as a speculation tool if you are living there. If not, then it should be a massive tax liability. Pressure people buying empty homes to either rent them to someone for cheap, live in them, or sell them.
this is precisely what NIMBYism is. People living in their own homes, who want to force up the value by preventing new homes from being constructed.
it’s also the reason for the crisis. without that attitude and all the zoning restrictions, our housing market would be much more cheap and flexible. but when you have towns that only permit like 50 new houses a a year, and the population is growing at 3x that, you have a serious problem
I think the concept of a tax penalty with some relief for having a tenant that isn’t being gouged sounds nice.
Hell, just requiring HAVING a tenant would be great for starters because of how many empty homes there are. If you’ve got the empty homes, and a tax penalty for them being empty, suddenly they’d have to compete for tenants. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
What we need is a mandated and enforced vacancy tax nationwide. Make it high enough to fix the housing crisis.
*Edited to add: according to the Wikipedia article I linked, Canada and the USA have cities that have implemented vacancy taxes. We need to do like France and Ireland and make it nationwide.
Most homeowners only own the home they live in. For what it’s worth, housing prices don’t matter if you don’t intend to buy or sell.
I think much more money is tied up in funds that indirectly own the houses. Common folk likely have some of their 401k tied up, knowingly or unknowingly.
Housing prices shouldn’t matter, except you can borrow against the valuation, making the hypothetical cost real. Also real estate taxes and insurance.
yes, they very much do. most people aren’t selling their 401K anytime soon if they aren’t in their 60s.
but the value of that asset very much impacts their sense of financially security and their spending habits. a drop in the stock market doesn’t impact people day to day, but it very much causes them to belt tighten.
i was only able to go to college because of the appreciation on my parents house. they never had the income to pay for college, but since our hose went from 200K to 400K they were able to get me into college. a lot of people have only been able to build financial security by leveraging the value of their home for loans.
So your parents borrowed against the value of their home to put you through college. They could have also taken out parent plus loans to do the same thing. Why is this an argument for letting home prices soar?
you can’t take out loans if you have no collateral to back up the loan.
the could not have taken out the loan without the housing value ti back up the loan.
do you not understand how loans work? you can’t just get 50K from the bank without collateral.
the point is most americans have banked their entire lives on the value of their home. if you sudden deprecation everyone’s home by 25% the economy will go into a depression.
it’s not an argument for or against it. it’s the reality of the situation.
I think you should be a resident with records of living in the country before being allowed to buy. Letting the Chinese wealthy buy up all our land is stupid and short sighted
I don’t know why homeless people don’t break into every unused house and squat in it, especially in the winter.
Eventually, that’s what’s going to happen, as our society switches from a Trickle Down Economy to a Robin Hood Economy (take from the Rich, give to the poor). If the MAGAs and Dems don’t want that, then they better get busy establishing a Trickle UP Economy.
Because a lot of the homes are uselessly far away for them. No job, no charity coverage, no panhandling opportunities. A house is of little comfort if you are hungry and can’t get food.
Valid.
Most of these houses are not in downtowns of big cities but in rural towns that are far away from everything. Not to mention, just because a unit is vacant that doesn’t mean it’s not being used.
Yeah they do that in my city and neighborhood, unfortunately they often set the homes or apartment buildings on fire, using coffee cans full of gasoline as heat/light, or straight up cooking meth.
I wish homelessness were a problem so simple as “give them a home” but it’s not. The original cause of their homelessness must be addressed for it to work. Strong safety nets must be in place, a strong welfare state, mental healthcare, training, substance abuse treatment.
Of course we could pay for that as a country but we’re instead focused on multiplying the unimaginable fortunes of the ultra rich instead.
Housing first is just the most effective strategy. It doesn’t solve everything, but it helps the most people fastest and is very cost effective
We have to fix a lot of things, but people focus on this because it’s low hanging fruit
Housing the homeless just gets them to stop sleeping on benches temporarily. It helps YOU from seeing the “unsightly hobos” in ur community. It does not solve the core issues that their having a hard time participating in our society, and is a band aid solution. Homeless people either have mental issues that need mended, drug issues that need mended, or have fallen on hard times but still need not only a home but a job to hold down that will pay for their housing and food. If it was as simple as putting homeless up in houses we would have eradicated this issue decades ago if nothing to keep the bourgeoisie from having to see the poors. Without the means to maintain and upkeep their homes they will just end up on the street again in no time.
It doesn’t displace them - it gives them a safe place to sleep and store their stuff. It gives them a way to stay clean and fit in with society. It gives them safety at night. It gives them a mailing address
It gives them a way back into society. It gives them basic dignity as a human.
I’m not saying homeless people have no other problems, or that we don’t desperately need better mental health services and social safely nets… But the biggest problem for them is indeed that they don’t have a home!
It’s not rocket science. Housing first is extremely effective in practice, for the recipients first and foremost
You’re confusing cause and effect. Usually people use drugs and have mental health issues because they are homeless. They’re not homeless because they have those maladies. Homeowners weather those challenges just fine. And living on the street creates drug and mental health issues. If I had to sleep on the sidewalk, I sure as hell would want to be high all day. Wouldn’t you?
A homeless drug addict is just a middle class drug addict with a smaller bank account balance.
Owning a home or otherwise having stable housing doesn’t mean you don’t have or can’t develop debilitating mental health or drug issues. I’ve worked with many currently and previously high-functioning, well paid, housed individuals who have developed severe mental health or drug problems despite their economic security. Economic security and stable housing absolutely are protective factors which reduce the risk of developing such problems, but they don’t eliminate genetic factors, trauma, unexpected economic hardships, etc.
Source: I work with people who have severe mental illness and addiction problems, most of whom are currently homeless.
Absolutely. The first step in solving the homeless problem is sorting out the people who are homeless because they are addicted or mentally ill, and those regular people who are homeless because the system failed them, and they found themselves without a roof. Many of those people were contributing members of society, with educations, even college degrees and careers, when society decided to stomp on them hard. They can easily be contributing citizens again, if someone would give them a hand until they can get their financial feet under them again.
Reminder: being mentally ill or addicted folks doesn’t preclude someone from holding down a job and/or being a “regular” person. They might just need extra supports.
Source: have mental illness. Am mostly a regular person but need extra supports. Am currently holding down a job requiring an MS.
Valid, but I’m referring to those really unfortunate people who have serious issues like out-of-control, unmedicated schizophrenia. Those people are not going to integrate back into society without a lot of help, which they should absolutely get.
I’m just suggesting that there has to be a triage system, so that people get the help that they personally need, whether it’s medical, psychiatric, or job related.
Ah, ok. It sounded like you were advocating for helping the “easy cases” and ignoring those that needed a bit more support.
because that’s a crime.
Being homeless is also considered a “crime” in many places
This is MAGA America, there is no rule of law anymore, most people just haven’t figured that out yet.
I know what you’re getting at, but saying “there is no rule of law anymore” is a bit hyperbolic. The cops, at least in my city, are still arresting people. You make it seem like we can just do whatever we want now. This isn’t The Purge.
I don’t know why homeless people don’t break into every unused house and squat in it, especially in the winter.
Because cops kill people who do. There will be no “Robin Hood economy” without extreme violence.
Now those homes slowly rot and lose value and become dangereous to live in.
As a result, rich people can’t run airbnbs. Capitalists are losing in long term for pride/greed/incompetence.
At this rate they will require government subsidies to rebuild them later. All because those selfish low-to-upper middleclass people are refusing 50 year mortgages.
the houses don’t lose value. the land goes up faster in value than the deprecation on the physical house.
the price of the land is what matters way more than the house on it.
To an extent. But I can buy a house for like 25% of the typical cost around here for a 1986 property versus a recent build, even with comparable location and land area.
Varies by locale, in LA the value of structures are likely a rounding error, in the middle of nowhere, the structure is nearly everything.
yes, but most of the population lives in urban centers. they don’t live in the middle of no where. and it’s not viable for them to move there.
there are houses 2 hours from my city that cost like 200K. i could easily by them. but I can’t live there because it would mean spending 4-5 hours in a car every day. there are no jobs in those towns. anything that’s an hours drive or less, is closer to a million dollars. which i can’t afford.
Doesn’t cost much to keep some upkeep temp in the house, that keeps away mold at least
They should never have been allowed to become gambling chips.
Noone should be allowed to purchase a home without agreeing to live in it full time for at least a year afterwards. Split it into a duplex to become a landlord? Another year. Wanna be a landlord? You must live in that building full time along with your tenants. Outrageous? Not nearly as outrageous as homelessness because of the prices.
Easiest way is to ensure the unit isn’t vacant for more than a year, else they will get taxed extra. Also rent shouldn’t be x% higher than the mortgage.
The first rule seems likely to work. The second guarantees no property will ever be renovated.
Good idea. There are plenty more conditions that could be added on to make becoming a landlord/gambler much less attractive. Like: you can’t even begin to buy another until you’ve finished your year and sold the place.
Yes, the government can actually do something about it if they want, and imo that’s the issue, because taxes from property sales is much more attractive to them.
Don’t forget brib…sorry, I mean lobbying from rich people and corporations owning a lot of properties.
Some cities in Australia have a vacant property tax. It makes sense in some areas.
Make the tax on properties you don’t personally inhabit a percentage of unrealized capital gains of all assets. Limit untaxed property size to an area the median person reporting for jury duty can circumnavigate on foot within one minute. Is the untaxed property size too small for your preference because the people of your county are too unhealthy? Maybe improve your local healthcare system.
Basically, tie metrics coupled with the well-being of the median citizen with taxes on the wealthy. Eventually, the metrics will be framed or rigged by a corrupt charlatan or strongman (e.g. by exiling the sick and homeless), but to the extent that the laws are updated and enforced, people will be healthier.
it’s called a vacancy tax.
landlords already get tax discounts for living in properties they rent out in most communities.
You shouldn’t be allowed to own residential property you don’t live on. There needs to be a way for people to move so after 3 months of owning a property that is not your primary residence taxes go through the roof and double every year.
“What about renters?”
Basement suites / duplexes exist. An apartment building will be better taken care of when the owner has to also live in the apartment building.Another good idea would be to require every rental to include a rent-to-buy option. If the renter wishes, a substantial portion of those rental fees would count as equity, and at any time they can afford it, they can exercise that option to buy. If they decide to move out, that equity does not revert to landlord but goes into a special trust which pays for more affordable housing.
We prefer to call them investment properties.
We need a land value tax to stop real estate speculation.
And if you let people live in them they might depreciate in value. So…
I’d love to ensure everyone has an acceptable home and access to clean water and food. It seems like we could do that.
Conversely, I’ve seen people’s living situations and people are fucking gross. This includes home owners and non homeowners.
People get shit on and then just repeatedly shit on. I’m not sure what I would do, had I held the power. Probably let people have smaller homes and start there. Like those little mini homes? Still homes, still have housing, but limited. Earn more?
Idk. I’m not a politician.
That’s true, but also inversely generally being gross on a property does not outweigh the value of the property over time in most cases. Even having gross tenants over time at market rent generally results in net profit after they leave and any additional cleanup costs incurred, plus you still own the property at the end of the day, and if we’re talking about houses, you probably own the land too.
I’ve seen what you’re describing and I think what you’re getting at is more of a societal systemic issue related to mental health and income. Most people I think would like to live clean and healthy lives, but they either need mental health support they aren’t getting/can’t afford, etc, and/or are spending more time working/taking care of family/battling addiction or whatever and end up not taking care of themselves or where they live
But at the end of the day this is all anecdotal and the whole thing should be addressed by a governing body made up of compassionate voted-in representatives using available resources and a scientific approach that want to fix the problem rather than arbitrary individuals chatting about it
Yeah that makes sense. I do wish the humans were more caring of each other. We’re all here together to live. Why not help each other?
Are you trying to make a case that a gross tenant who doesn’t pay rent is the same as a nice tenant who does pay?
They specifically said that a gross tenant paying market rate is better than no tenant.
or you cant rent them out in perputuity.
Thats not what depreciation means.
If youre trying to say the wear and tear decreases the property’s value, it wouldn’t decrease much more than a rented property, and the investor would have all that rent income.
Also they already get a tax break for depreciation…
Also we have more churches than homeless people. If churches aren’t even helping one of the most disadvantages and the individuals damn near every holy book says to help. What are they doing? They don’t even help the homeless children.
Yes, these are built for investors only.
Its make believe, now everyone loose your minds!
Why: Baltimore has 10,000 vacant homes. You’ll die or get seriously injured sleeping im about 90% of those. We sometimes call them bandominiums here.
So is there any statistic that excludes unlivable places?
What, like Baltimore? :D
Id like to see that too.
Paywalled
Got you agent. Vacant homes are most often un maintained and very dangerous…often hundreds of thousands of dollars away from being safely habitable. Google vacant home picture.
Even if 92% of vacant homes are as you describe, the remaining 8% would be enough to house every homeless person.
Try 95 to 99%.
And not really, even if you have a vacant airbnb property in west virginia. That is far away from an unhoused person’s community… Where they get food, support, income and social services.
And the idea to lock up the poor in their “own” community has been tried many times before, in very unsuccessful ways.
I had a homeless outreach team under me in a big east coast city for the last five years. What they need is substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, and a big social network that supports them… Or they will become unhoused as quickly as we house them.
I was wondering what the actual underlying reason is.
Nah. The actual reason is greed.
If you owned a house you wouldn’t let a homeless person live in it for free. That doesn’t make you greedy.
If you own something necessary for survival, that is in short supply, that you don’t need and isn’t being used, and you don’t sell it to someone who does need it because it will be worth more if you continue to hoard it unused, that is greedy.
Except they eventually start paying rent. Statistically if you just give a homeless person a couple months of free rent (and rehab if they need it) they become productive members of society.
The problem is Americans are too fucking greedy to help someone that doesn’t benefit themselves
That’s not really true. A couple months free rent don’t fix schizophrenia, or meth/opiate addiction, or illiteracy, or any of the other serious issues keeping them on the streets. I’ve paid close attention to wet shelters, transitional housing projects. There is some success there, but only when there are TON of focused resource an people are given warm referrals (i.e. their case manager drives them to their appointments). Otherwise they just end up on the streets again.
Well adjusted, sane people who are on the streets generally take advantage of the programs, charities, and churches there to help them get back on their feet. The ones who are chronically homeless, it’s not so simple.
It is an issue of greed, but I don’t think it’s landlords refusing to let homeless folks in for a few free months. It’s that we’ve ripped away every resources meant to keep people from falling down that far to begin with, in the quest for Bigger Billionaire Bonuses.
(and rehab if they need it)
Nobody is willing to take on the risk to help their neighbors 🤷🏻♀️
If I had an empty home that I was paying a mortgage on, I’m not sure the bank or insurance company would be too happy with that either, which doesn’t help.
Some systemic change would be required
have you ever worked in a helping profession?
i have. and i know many people who have.
there is a huge burnout rate because human beings are fucking awful. your desire to help people disappears pretty quick when they assault you, threaten you, and steal your shit. go work at a homeless shelter and get stuck with a few needles by peoplyou want to help and i bet your attitude would change really quick.
you make the false assumption that people need/want/appreciate help. many of them do not. many people are rotten to the core.
no amount of sytematic change can make the 10-20% of shitbird human beings into better people. hell, just look on this site how many shitty trolls there are.
