In the 1910s, US cities began enacting policies that would shape neighborhoods and, unintentionally, lay the roots for the severe housing shortage today: single-family zoning laws.
Zoning laws affect what you can build where. But a quicker route to increasing the supply of homes (this lowering prices) is to levy high taxes on single family homes that the owner does not live in.
Single family homes have become an investment opportunity for corporations and wealthy individuals. When vast sums find their way into a market, prices can go up sharply. Corporations, private equity funds, and the like cannot inhabit a home. And a person can only inhabit one primary residence (>50%). So if people (or companies) want to own homes as rental properties, they’d pay higher taxes. Some would sell those extra homes, reducing Demand and putting them on the market, increasing supply. The additional taxes some would pay to keep the extra single family homes could fund housing-related programs like section 8, redevelopment of depressed areas and so forth.
Can anyone with experience in housing policy with in? Would this work? Aside from pissing off rich people?
The consequences of that would be tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people like me quickly losing their place to live. Lots of people can only afford to live right now because they’re fortunate enough to know somebody with a second place which they can rent at below market rates. Most of the neighborhood I live in was bought and built in the late 80s, and is now the de facto retirement plan for dozens of military members who bought these places. No one idea fixes anything entirely, but I think the zoning ideas are the most widely and quickly effective, without destroying lives of average people.
You wouldn’t lose your place to live. Your place to live would become for sale on the open market for someone like you to buy, and if tens (hundreds?) of thousands of those places went up for sale at once then someone like you could afford to buy it. Having necessary housing for other humans be a retirement plan is kinda fucked up.
The issue is there’s nothing stopping house owners from increasing the rent they charge to cover their costs. There needs to be enforced rent control in order for the profit margin to be squeezed.
That’s a different argument. The point here is that extra money (even if it is paid by the renter) then goes into the city funds to build more high density housing and more public transit to get from lower density areas to the higher density areas.
Zoning laws affect what you can build where. But a quicker route to increasing the supply of homes (this lowering prices) is to levy high taxes on single family homes that the owner does not live in.
Single family homes have become an investment opportunity for corporations and wealthy individuals. When vast sums find their way into a market, prices can go up sharply. Corporations, private equity funds, and the like cannot inhabit a home. And a person can only inhabit one primary residence (>50%). So if people (or companies) want to own homes as rental properties, they’d pay higher taxes. Some would sell those extra homes, reducing Demand and putting them on the market, increasing supply. The additional taxes some would pay to keep the extra single family homes could fund housing-related programs like section 8, redevelopment of depressed areas and so forth.
Can anyone with experience in housing policy with in? Would this work? Aside from pissing off rich people?
In most states there’s already an additional tax for not living in the home in the form of not receiving the homestead exemption.
Expanding the homestead exemption could be part of the solution.
The consequences of that would be tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people like me quickly losing their place to live. Lots of people can only afford to live right now because they’re fortunate enough to know somebody with a second place which they can rent at below market rates. Most of the neighborhood I live in was bought and built in the late 80s, and is now the de facto retirement plan for dozens of military members who bought these places. No one idea fixes anything entirely, but I think the zoning ideas are the most widely and quickly effective, without destroying lives of average people.
You wouldn’t lose your place to live. Your place to live would become for sale on the open market for someone like you to buy, and if tens (hundreds?) of thousands of those places went up for sale at once then someone like you could afford to buy it. Having necessary housing for other humans be a retirement plan is kinda fucked up.
The issue is there’s nothing stopping house owners from increasing the rent they charge to cover their costs. There needs to be enforced rent control in order for the profit margin to be squeezed.
That’s a different argument. The point here is that extra money (even if it is paid by the renter) then goes into the city funds to build more high density housing and more public transit to get from lower density areas to the higher density areas.