Unused housing should be taxed mercilessly.
And single-family homes should have a 100% annual tax on them, unless they are owned by an individual human/family (none of this LLC bullshit) who own only 1 house. Make a 6-month exception for inherited houses just so they can be sold, but otherwise just tax the shit out of them.
Make hoarding housing a liability.
Disagree, my grandfather’s home has set vacant for nearly 4 years now after his passing. The estate cannot be wrapped up due to my estranged uncle not believing the property is worthless.
The county keeps upping the tax assessment, and so he’s convinced it’s worth something and refuses to visit the preoperty.
On paper this is an unused house in reality the roof finally fell in about 6 months after my grandfather died. The county refuses to condem it because they want the tax revenue and my estranged uncle has held up the estate indefinitely with unrealistic expectations.
I wouldn’t say my poor as fuck family deserve a 100% annual tax on the assessed value of a near worthless asset.
I imagine the options would be to pay the tax or just, I dunno, get rid of the property? You said it’s worthless.
I mean, he plainly explained that there’s a son bogging down the estate over the house. He might have said “worthless” but I’m sure it’s more like some land value and essentially zero structure value, so they might want to get a few thousand, while he blocks that transaction holding out for ten-fold. He also asserts the county tax assessments are not consistent with market value, and I think most people who have dealt with tax assessments can relate to the disconnect between realistic market value and tax assessment, one way or the other.
Or even if they did say “fine, you know what, take the property and we’ll take the rest and you can deal with trying to extract the value you think there is”, if he doesn’t agree to that you can’t really force it short of fully disclaiming yourself out of the entire estate. So if the man had $200k in other assets, then that would be an expensive thing to forfeit for the sake of not dealing with a busted house on a bit of land.
It’s a common problem with estates though even if 4/5 people want to sell it for whatever they can get, that 1 person can keep it in limbo for a very long time. If there wasn’t a will or trust that explicitly gave someone power (and even if there is in some cases), a few years of nothing happening isn’t actually outside the norm.
Sadly, even with a will it can take years to resolve ownership of property after a death.
The house is, the land does have some value even after demolition costs. Basically uncle thinks it’s worth 200,000. In reality it’s worth 40,000, maybe a bit less.
Also my parents have their trailer (does not belong to the estate) on the property. They’d love to settle it, but 1 party refuses.
This plan would actually make my parents homeless as they can’t afford to purchase anything else or rent anywhere near where they live. If they could at least divide the proceeds of the land sale they might be able to afford something. This proposed tax would break them
Based on my experience, you managed to described like every rural estate situation I’ve ever seen. Household living in a trailer towed onto their parents land. That household probably doing a lot to take care of their parents. Then the parents die and suddenly some relative no one has heard from in decades comes along to really screw things up, often from an urban area with zero concept of the market realities of a poorly mantained house on rural land.
I get the whole “hoarding sucks” but it’s really only an urban problem. Go to a rural area and you can find plenty of housing stock for cheap.
I don’t know your country’s laws, but where I live, if it’s not inhabitable it is taxed way lower (and without a roof, it’s definitely not inhabitable)
That’s how it should be, but the county refuses to deem it uninhabitable. They like their tax revenue
On the contrary, a 100% yearly tax from the assesed value of the property, enacted after the property is vacant for 12 months straight, would be a strong motivator for your idiot uncle to actually visit the property, and/or the rest of you to just renounce or disclaim yourselves from ownership of what you described as a near worthless asset, and then let your idiot uncle eat 100% of the improperly assessed value’s vacancy tax.
Elsewhere in this thread you state the house is basically worthless, the land is worth 40k… but idiot uncle thinks both the land and house are worth 200k together, if I read your right.
Organize everyone other than idiot uncle into a plan to disclaim themselves from the inherited property provided the uncle ponies up 40k ( or maybe more if your idiot uncle can be duped into such ), so your parents in the trailer can just buy another plot to park their mobile home, and idiot uncle can deal with his idiocy.
I mean, that seems to be a reasonable plan with or without the proposed vacant property tax, unless there are more complications between the … non idiot uncle parties to the estate.
I don’t know for certain of course as I don’t know your locale, but… you could probably find another plot of land for about 40k?
Idiot uncle thinks its worth over 4x that, so… from his perspective, this would be a steal, to basically gain sole ownership? Let him deal with selling or demo/refurbing the house/land.
… Or have ya’ll already tried something like this, and idiot uncle refused?
What if it caught on fire? An insurance company won’t insure a house without a roof. It has zero value as it is. The land it sits on is still worth something. You should have it appraised with the collapsed roof and see if your taxes go down.
County appraisers refused to drop the value. They like their tax revenue
I’m not familiar with estate law, but seeing as you state your family is living on a trailer on the land, seems like either there’d be an exception (I don’t see how having essentially unused rooms on a plot of land would be a problem) or there’s some other stuff going on. Maybe if they’re not paying into the estate to rent the land that’d be an issue, but I have no idea how that works for land held in an estate. I wonder if 100% tax would incentivize him to sell? One way or the other either he sells or the land is repossessed because presumably the estate would not be able to cover the tax.
He’s a very stubborn man, and very convinced an asset he’s never seen has tremendous worth. He was apparently very disappointed that my grandfather only had $100 in his checking.
In this proposed scenario, if he does nothing he loses some money (he’s doing pretty well), but then my parents become homeless through his inaction. That seems wrong.
My family lives on the land yes, but ownership of the land belongs only to the estate. No issue with a rent payment since there was never a rent payment prior to my grandfather’s death.
If your family is living on the property I still don’t understand how this applies? The land is in use, occupied by your family, and is not vacant. If it’s zoned for single family, and a single family lives there, it’s not vacant? As far as them not paying rent now, not really sure how that happens, seeing as the land is now owned by the estate, and they are livening on it for free(?). I’m not sure how that’s not just legally considered squatting, unless there’s an agreement for use of the land provided they maintain it in the interim, but again, not an estate lawyer, nor do I know anything about property stuff. But yea, pretty sure the proposal is not relevant to your situation. It’s like considering a property with a mother in law suite vacant unless there suite is also occupied. That’s not the way it would work.
My grandfather’s home is vacant, my parents live in a separate trailer on the property. So that’s the crux isn’t it, what does vacancy mean? Because on paper this property has an occupied trailer and an unoccupied single family home. It’s one “property” but the trailer and home are taxed separately by the county and owned by different people. The county does consider them seperate dwellings, unlike a mother-in-law suite.
The estate lawyer has made it clear there are no issues from my parents living on the property still and there is no expectations of payment. It’s definently not squatting, 50% of the estate does belong to my parents after all.
Thank you for that information. Who would have guessed estate/property law is complicated. I would still suggest there are solutions to this sort of situation than can be reasonably addressed while still honoring the main purpose of the proposal, but I obviously would not be the person to speak on them.
Good luck to your family. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that.
If 50% of the estate belongs to your parents and there’s already a tax entity for the trailer, then in this example they would go to forced arbitration to draw up their portion of the land ownership and get their single family tax rebate, and the other half of the property would be the part that starts getting a vacancy tax. I’d imagine with a timeline like six months there’d be a whole lot of arbitrations in the short term to settle existing arrangements like this one. Honestly I’m curious what the land ownership looks like already for the trailer - if they can legally stay on the estate then there must be a portion of the ground that already legally belongs to them.
No part of the land is directly owned by my parents. It is owned by the estate, which is 50/50 between my parent and my uncle. Trust me if my parents owned the land under their trailer they would be a lot less stressed.
Like I said them continuing to live there is not an issue. Maybe if my uncle pressed it it would become one, but all he wants is 100k +. So he really doesn’t care beyond that.
Unfortunately his wants aren’t compatible with the reality of the situation.
No one has pursued a forced arbitration, and honestly I’m not sure why. Per the lawyer it seems like the property can exist in limbo indefinitely, or at least until one party forces something. It’s a weird stalemate of unrealistic expectations. He wants a lot of money, but also doesn’t want to pay a lawyer himself or do any work. As long as this continues my parents keep their home at least.
6 months to offload a house is not always so easy.
I did a search around the area I grew up that is very rural and I checked 4 properties for sale, two of them under $100k and they’ve been listed for over a year. In urban areas there’s demand, but rural areas commonly have houses just no one wants on land that no one cares about. No distant LLCs want them so they are available, but they aren’t convenient to anything so no one wants them either.
That means they aren’t worth 100k. Forcing people to sell them for their actual value will lower real estate prices nationwide.
There are many cases where you just can’t reduce prices enough to make them sell
- my higher priced town paid Pennies on the dollar for a complex that used to be a mental hospital and housing for various challenged. No developer was willing to pay anything because of lead and asbestos remediation costs. My town was hoping to get EPA funds and didn’t so is saddled with unusable property that it also can’t afford to clean up
- the town I grew up in has been declining for decades. Many houses are well below the cost of cars but still no one willing or able to buy. Last time I checked there seemed to be a floor at $5k but there were multiple habitable houses for $5k, and no buyers
If they’re not worth any money, then the tax burden of sitting on them shouldn’t be high enough to be a problem. But if it is, you can sell them cheap, abandon them to government auction, replat them with neighboring cheap lots do make ag land or a large lot for an industrial or multifamily development, or more.
“I can’t make a bunch of money selling or renting this lot” is not an excuse to just sit on land waiting for the value to go up.
Pricing of homes in food deserts has pretty much zero impact on the housing that could actually help low-income individuals.
The housing situation and relative benefits (and lack therof) to house residents in rural areas is just fundamentally distinct from the urban situation.
I like that this idea also punishes single family home owners for hoarding land. You could build a ton of apartments on a single American-sized sfh lot.
I don’t see that it does that. What do you mean?
That assumes that all land is taxed at a similar value. However my property at 1/5 of an acre in town is worth more than a standard suburban acreage.
I think this continues to discourage living in higher density downtowns where there is walkability and transit, while enocuraging sprawl because large single family suburban lots are cheaper so have lower tax
And Airbnb. Fuck that company and the people that buy houses and use them for this. My parents live in the mountains in a popular spot for vacations and camping. Nowadays they are the only house on their entire street that isn’t an Airbnb.
As a current landlord about to extend a lease at exactly the same terms for 3rd year in a row (and I fix everything within 24 hours) - I agree with this too.
It’s ridiculous that my largest store of value is a speculation bubble and a piece of paper with my name on it
Will be in your situation in due time.
Inheritance will give my siblings and I property.
My siblings and I have already talked about it. We’re looking to see if we can transfer it to Community Land Trusts or sell.
Here’s a link to the Canada wide association: https://www.communityland.ca/
Here’s the one specific to Ottawa: https://www.oclt.ca/
There are others in other cities.
Some (like Ottawa) don’t take individual units yet but we’ll prob sell and then invest in them or if they choose to buy individual units, sell to them.
If you can find one. Sell to a community land trust or housing co-op. You can get your capital back and the people living there can manage and own their own homes.
You can then reinvest the capital into other projects: https://tapestrycapital.ca/
Or in renewable energy: https://www.orec.ca/
Or credit union class B shares.
They try to aim for 4-5% ROI so above inflation. Unfortunately, most people want the ubsustainable returns in real estate.
Ooo! Those are good alternatives. I’ll give em a read through. It might solve something on my end.
Say I want to move cities for a new job. There are at least two uncertainties I need to resolve -
- will this job work out for the long term?
- will I like this city at all (or know where to buy)?
This prevents me from wanting to buy immediately.
What prevents me from selling immediately is losing a stable footing I can plan around if the new city doesn’t work out. More broadly for everyone in this situation though is the cash sits.
I will need to buy immediately or park it in some investment that keeps pace/liquid enough to convert back to a house, which requires additional knowledge/research.
So to be risk averse, sitting on the house is generally a safe default…
But thank you for starting me on considering this as an options and what parameters need to be met to make sense.
Glad to help.
For now. I’d at least put it in your will and talk to the beneficiaries of your estate about it.
I have family members who are more into the whole Real Estate “game” and would rather the property. Putting it in your will prevent any shenanigans.
The whole “society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never know” and all that.
You’re right about moving cities part of it. Ideally if there are enough community land trusts and housing cooperatives you won’t face such issues as the distinction between “renting” and “owning” will disappear. And your investments will be divorced from land and onto actual projects.
Chris? Lol
Sell your house and stop participating if you’re concerned about it
This advice is indistinguishable from unsolicited mail wanting to buy houses in cash at above market rate… Presumably so Blackrock can jack it up, restrict supply, and charge way more while doing way less.
Which is exactly what OP post is trying to fix.
I’m not a hero, but I’m doing what’s fair given the system we have. Even I’m saying this is fucked, but it’s the best I can do to affect things for the better.
I couldn’t disagree more. All the hatred should be directed at individuals/companies that own a bunch of properties. They are specifically in the business of fucking people.
The thing I hate most is that all of these clowns will tell you you MUST raise rent every year. They also would likely try and murder you if you even got close to forcing them to pay their employees more every year, or even just other people’s employees. Keep in mind, if you own the property, you are making money with equity no matter if you have tenants or not. So all the rent is gravy but they want to squeeze people to death because they legally have to maintain their own rentals, which the cost of upkeep is REALLY far below the rent paid. Again, $0 in rent is STILL making money off the property.
100% as long as you’re talking about paid off property. That doesn’t really exist since every company that makes this their business model is over-leveraged as fuck and landlords with a single property are very likely to still have a mortgage.
One day you’ll learn the difference between hard and liquid assets.
As opposed to the people who merely own one family of serfs?
Wtf are you talking about?
Edit: messed up the formatting.
Does it matter to a family that can only rent if they rent from a corporation vs individual?
Spreading out renters is not a solution.
The following math works if the all landlords own the maximum allowed.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 1000, only 1‰ of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 100, only 1% of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 10, only 10% of the population can be landlords.
If the maximum rentals one could own is 1, only 50% of the population can be landlords.
To go back to the beginning, if there is no maximum, only 1 person (0.0001%) of the population can be a landlord and everyone else is a renter (the whole “you will own nothing and be happy” line).
What percent of the population do you want to permit to be landlords? Mind you, not property managers, specifically landlords.
Remember 100% of the population can be a property manager because everyone can manage their own property. But the largest percentage of the population that can be landlords is 50%.
I see that you differentiate from people who happen to have extra space and want to rent it out, that I can understand. But also understand that someone can buy 1 home specifically to fuck over other people.
The problem is that some people want to own other people’s homes. Some people want to own 1000 people’s homes and others just 1 is enough. In either case it is not the number that is the problem but the desire to own other people’s homes for the sole purpose of rent seeking that is the problem.
That is what is meant by the comment about “merely own one family of serfs” is about.
Why make an allowance for property managers? Seems like they see a group of people being exploited, and want to find a way to take a cut of that exploitation.
Good question. I understand where you’re coming from with that statement. I have seen ads such as: (https://bsky.app/profile/derek.bike/post/3kkwecolbwk23) and very much share your sentiment.
Short answer: The Division of Labour
Long answer (sorry in advance):
I work in tech, I can choose to work in tech all day because I am the most productive in it. Then I can hire a chef that cooks for me, a maid to clean, a gardener to garden, etc and a manager that manages the home. Each cook, maid, gardener, and manager can in turn have multiple clients. And if they work all day in the thing they are most proficient at, they can in turn hire other people to do the stuff they do not do. This style of living is usual in India, Singapore and outside “The West” more generally. You can see here that the property manager is a part of the division of labour and so “competes in the marketplace” with other property managers for that position, the same with me and all the other workers do for our respective roles in the example.
This is peak liberalism/free market dynamics. I don’t think this is sustainable without coersion. But this is what is meant by “social production” by both Smith and Marx.
Furthermore, you can choose not to hire anybody and be your own property manager which is, in my opinion, more sustainable and totally allowed.
The problem with landlords is that if all the land is owned by someone else, you do not have an option of managing your own land without “hiring” anybody else to do it so you are trapped. This also allows landlords to squeeze money out of people. And the biggest issue it allows other people to rule out your own existance. This sentiment is perfectly encapsulated by the following quote:
Land, n. A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.
- The Devil’s Dictionary https://archive.org/details/devilsdictionar00bier/page/68/
I hope that shows my position on the matter. I would like your take on it. As can be seen in this thread, there are those who do understand the position and instead of engaging with it, just deride it.
Thanks for the discussion. My understanding of the quote that you’ve included is that it is an argument against private ownership of land in general. I think that this notion, also carried to its logical conclusion, can only be sustained with an absolute degree of central planning. That is to say that a central organizing force would be needed to ensure that some percent of land is set aside for growing food for A through G and beyond, as well as land set aside for any other services that used by all parties (hospitals, schools, etc.)
I’m not necessarily trying to argue against this, and think that there may be a need to address scenarios like this relatively soon. Blue Origin has a vision statement that says something like, “hundreds of people living and working in space”. I’ve wondered what property ownership might look like for people living and working in space where “property” is a significantly more constrained resource.
Sorry that I’ve kind of glossed over the role of the property manager a bit to address the latter part of your post. I can understand the difference to an extent, though my experience with property managers is that their objectives are to extract the highest possible amount from the renter (since their income is a percentage of the rent paid), which I see as a little different from a cook, maid, or gardener. Competition in the market place for a property manager also seems that it may favor the property manager that can maximize the income to the landlord.
None of the shit your said counters my original point. Individual renters with a single rental property inherently care about it and it will almost never be their only income. They’re not doing it to squeeze the most money out of it. Most just need rent to cover their own expenses.
Previous comment is still utter fucking nonsense.
You were given a great answer but to put it even more bluntly, just because someone owns one slave it doesn’t make it any better than someone owning a whole plantation of slaves. It’s horrible either way, I don’t care if you have more time to take better care of your slave because it’s your only one; you still own a fucking slave
It wasn’t a great answer. It was incredibly banal and doesn’t take reality into consideration. This idiotic logic can be applied to anything. It doesn’t make any more sense just because you repeat it.
We live in a capitalist country. We’re all slaves by this primitive thinking. You can shift the blame endlessly.
A properly maintained rental that is fairly priced is not unfair to anyone.
Ban corporations from owning residential properties. Houses shouldn’t be held like stocks or cryptocurrency. Only allow individuals to own a maximum of two residential properties, which must be occupied by the owner at least 5 months out of the year or be surrendered to the government, to be sold to an individual who will live in the house.
In the Netherlands we have wooncorporatie, which are non-profit home rental companies. I think it’s a reasonable model, although the center right government tried to get rid of them for years. (Now we have a coalition of far-right parties in power, and they don’t even have anything like a consistent ideology much less policy so who can know what the future brings?)
I don’t like the idea of US government taking the property at below market value, since that would violate the takings clause of the Constitution.
What I would be in favor of is a real estate tax that increases if a property isn’t permanently occupied. Something that would encourage people to either reduce rent or unload the property.
It should be a reasonably gradual increase so that landlords aren’t penalized if they can’t find a tenant in the first or second month the unit is vacant. However if it’s been a year they should be approaching the point of owing more in taxes than the property is worth.
Then you can take it for back taxes.
It would also discourage air b2b type arrangements, unless you own and live in the property. No more buying a house so you can rent it out for exorbitant rates.
Annual land tax. The more you hoard - the more you pay.
There are specifically tax deductions for taxes paid on your primary residence, so theoretically there is a higher cost to owning multiple properties, however this cost is simply too low to be much of a deterrence
As in acrage? So if I was an independently wealthy birdwatcher that built a privately owned wilderness preserve I’d be taxed more than the local slumlord?
Yes. The land is a finite resource.
That depends on how you measure it.
You can try and live in an infinite coastline house I have in my pocket.
Couple the increasing property taxes on vacant homes with an agreement that there are no property taxes on properties leased for free to qualified individuals (people who would qualify for government housing anyway essentially) and the government will pay for repairs. The government gets a cheaper place to house the homeless, having only to pay for repairs, the landlord gets an appreciating asset with no repairs to worry about, and the homeless get a place to live. Seems like a win all around unless I’m missing something.
The only thing I can see that you’re missing is the requirement that poor people still suffer.
It’s bad enough to punish incident property hoarders for their hard work (inheriting wealth is hard work - you have to pretend to not be a piece of shit until Grandpa dies). You can’t also let poor people benefit from that at the same time!
I like this idea.
Honestly I would be okay with giving them 6-12 months of leeway. There’s a ton of reasons why it could take 6 months or more to be able to find a tenant, especially if the previous tenant did significant damages or if there’s wider economic issues in the area.
I’d be ok with them being able to appeal the increased rate, but they’d need to show that they are actively working to make it ready to rent.
Okay yeah. That could be a fair compromise. I like that.
I don’t like the idea of US government taking the property at below market value, since that would violate the takings clause of the Constitution.
I don’t like this phrasing because it seems like you only care that there’s a rule against it, and have no opinion whether that rule is good or not.
Well, yeah you have a point. However, at this point I’d rather see people just knee-jerk obey the Constitution even if they don’t understand why, as opposed to the way everyone in this administration wipes their ass with it.
Good point.
Whether a property is occupied seems too easy to game.
Currently many places already tax a “primary residence” differently. My town’s approach is all residences pay the same property tax rate but your primary residence has a significant value exemption so is effectively taxed less. This advantages people who own their own homes while giving some discouragement to people hoarding homes or having a vacation home or being a landlord. However the difference needs to be greater to have an a real effect. I’d argue the exemption for primary residence should be enough that lower income people be free of property tax on their own homes and the difference made up by higher rates on their own rest of us. It would be too expensive to hoard vacant properties, less profitable to airBnB
And there is already process and precedent for towns repossessing for unpaid property tax.
This idea of yours exists here in Belgium. On top of that in personal income tax we pay as much on an empty 2nd house as one with renters in it.
There’s punishment on houses that are below standard for isolation. Forced to renovate.
Yes papa government, tax us hard.
Eminent domain in California… You get $0.00 for your contribution.
The current federal government? This is about the United States Federal Government?
LOL, nope don’t trust them.
They’ll seize the houses of “smaller” landlords and give them to the 1% rich landlords, and their houses would be exempt from the regulations. Then they will raise the rent even more, and this time, they will actually have good lawyers, and the tenants will lose every time.
The government needs to be fixed before we can even attempt to fix other issues.
This government would seize housing, then deny access to people of color, LGBT people, people with disabilities (yes the ADA exist, but fascists ignore laws), probably anyone who ever voted registered as a democrat, and anyone else critical of the regime.
This would have to be done at the state level anyway since they enforce most of the real estate laws.
I am a former landlord and I approve of this message. We are back in the house we rented out for 22 years after we moved across the country to a better job, in a place we didn’t care for. We kept our house here so we could come back. We rented it out for 22 years at 30% or even less than market rate ($1600 a month in 2022 for a 3 bed two bath house near LA and a 10 m walk from the train) and we endured crooked and incompetent property managers, failed appliances and tenants who didn’t pay rent. One became a bank robber after we evicted them for not paying rent. They could have started robbing banks earlier I guess so they could at least pay the rent. Anyway, it worked out very well for us. We are back in our house where we like to live. People and companies who buy a bunch of houses and don’t rent them out to give people places to live shouldn’t be able to profit from doing that.
Anyway, it worked out very well for us
This proves the point. This is the kind of story that should end “so, in the end we ended up losing money on the place”. But, if an absent landlord can hire crooked and incompetent property managers, deal with deadbeat tenants, and still have it work out very well for them then it’s an investment where you really can’t lose.
I’m sure you’re lovely people. I don’t mean to criticize you in particular, just the game.
Had we sold our house when we took that job back east we would never have been able to come back here on what we could have saved from what a working person makes. So like I said, it worked out for us.
I don’t know why you’re getting disliked, it’s straight facts. And you weren’t even mean!
I only see one downvote, but thanks for saying that.
I’m a condo super, there’s one apartment in my building that has been vacant for 5+ years and the owners i think live in Hong Kong. If someone busted in there they could squat for years
Where I live there was a super-popular local bakery. The landlord tried to get them to pay a higher rent and then kicked them out when they refused. The building has now been empty for the last five years. I do not understand the economics of this shit.
Not likely intentional, more likely a redevelopment attempt that fell through, is blocked by zoning or other red tape, or changing market conditions.
We have a similar situation on a prime location on a very active street of shops and restaurants: there’s no reason for these building to be vacant for years. However I understand they wanted to redevelop to a much bigger building and have not been able to get it re-zoned.
Right across the street a similar redevelopment effort has been a huge success with something liver 100 apartments over street level restaurants. That’s perfect for that location and we need more of it, but exceeded zoning limits. Ever since then, our town council has been dragging to slow redevelopment
I don’t understand that either! Sometimes I think people are so numerally illiterate and emotionally butthurt that they completely disregard carrying and opportunity costs.
That’s terrible. You should post the address and unit number so everyone knows to stay away from it.
Where I live, there’s a bunch of abandoned squatter places where drug heads go to shoot up.
There’s been countless court cases of the city government trying to sue the landlords who own it. 90% of the time, the lawsuit fails because of some clause where if the landlord isn’t able to show up (because they live in a different state or a foreign investor), the court hearing gets postponed.
My city tried to pass an ordinance to remove that clause but it was shot down.
So random crack house owned by some rich asshole in California that’s next to a school doesn’t get any better for years.
Seems like the kinda thing that would get fixed with a Finnish cocktail party.
We need to strengthen adverse possession laws. Adverse possession, aka squatter’s rights, were intended for this exact problem. Adverse possession laws were very popular in the 19th century in the American west. In western states, there was a problem. Speculators out east would buy up undeveloped parcels and hoard them for investment purposes. They might buy up a piece of land in rural Kansas. They would wait until homesteaders moved in nearby, worked and built up their own farms. Then the speculators would sell. This was a way for lazy speculators to profit off the hard work of yeoman farmers.
So states passed adverse possession laws. The idea was that if you cared so little for a property that you don’t even notice someone openly living on it for 7 years or so, then really, you don’t deserve to own that property. There is only so much land on this Earth. We need to be good stewards of our finite land; especially if we’re taking that land from its natural state.
We need to strengthen and expand these laws. I would set adverse possession for condos and houses maybe to just three years. We have a severe housing shortage, we cannot afford to let units sit completely unused and wasted. If you own so much property, and care for it so little, that someone can live there for three years without you even noticing? Sorry. Use it or lose it.
Private property is a social contract. We agree to respect private property rights, because we have found through generations that a system based on private property produces a lot of benefits to society. But private property is not some absolute natural right. If you are going to own property to exclusion of everyone else, it is reasonable for you to be required to use that property productively. Why should we bother protecting the property rights of those who are using property in such destructive and anti-social ways like using vacant properties for speculation purposes?
All that would do is increase demand for security guards and expand their services to checking on residential properties the parasite class own.
That sounds like a bonus. Either way it’s distributing some amount of wealth and making it more expensive to be a deadbeat landlord.
I agree, but I don’t know if it would work well today. In the 19th century, the only way to find that someone was living on your land was to either go there yourself, or to hire someone to look for you. That was complicated because even communicating with someone from east coast to west coast was expensive and difficult.
These days you just need to leave a cheap security camera and check in every few months.
I’m trying to think up a scenario where it’s fair. Something so if someone genuinely cares about the place they don’t get screwed, but someone who isn’t local and never visits loses their rights. Also something so the place can go to someone local, and it isn’t easily compromised by someone who lives far away.
I keep thinking that getting this done requires getting rid of the anti-circumvention rules in copyright law. If it’s legal to provide someone with a tool that tricks a home security system, then people can actually buy that tool, use it, and move into the place, and the absent owner won’t be aware.
There are literally amendments to the Constitution preventing this from happening have you all lost your mind!
Why do we have to pretend the constitution matters when our enemies don’t?
Ummm… Because our enemies don’t… 🤷
They’re just kids living out a simplistic power fantasy. “If I were king of the world, I’d solve this huge, intractable problem with a simple order”. Like Mao ordering all the sparrows to be killed. Hopefully, once they experience the world a little, they realize that big problems are big because they’re difficult and complicated to solve.
Housing is more complex and the proposed solution may not work, but there are some problems that could be solved by someone with absolute power pretty easily. For example, if we shipped health insurance CEOs off to El Salvadorian labor camps instead of innocent immigrants, people would stop having their claims denied and the concept of a deductible would go the way of the dodo.
facepalm
Just apply a 300% tax on empty property. Empty houses don’t contribute to the local economy by using local businesses.
How would this help house homeless people?
Prices are artificially inflated due to reduced supply. Increased supply should lower cost * making homes more affordable.
- Absent other fuckery
People using homes as an asset (the same way they buy stocks/etc) would panic realizing that their golden goose is suddenly draining their bank account. They’d either offer rental prices dirt cheap, or give up and sell the property at whatever price people can afford (eg, 10% of what they currently charge).
There are currently MANY empty properties so this could have a larger effect than we often realize. Currently some cities try this the inverse way by giving tax credit to residents.
I’d hope that it would encourage renting the unit even at a discount to avoid the fine.
Which would in turn lower rents by the surge of units on the market for rent.
It’s a compromise, from the before times when one could assume people elected to their public positions where attempting to do those jobs in good faith.
The idea would be to give everyone something they want so that everyone could agree and actually get something done.
In this case, the house hoarders don’t immediately lose the resources they’ve hoarded, and instead get charged for the damage they’re doing to the economy. Ideally that money goes towards housing the poor, but that’s a side effect.
The point would be to make house hoarding non-viable as an income source, incentivising the hoarders to un-hoard.
Sadly, it wouldn’t do either without a much higher tax, which would never get agreed to
Nowadays it’s just a pipe dream that the money’d power wants to compromise on anything.
The Welsh (or some Welsh councils?) have already done it. Although the problem there is more with holiday homes people buy and leave empty most of the year. It’s fun to read people complaining that they have to sell it. Yes, that is the point.
Do you think you provide housing? Here’s a list of common signs:
If someone stole all your tools, you’d kill them, and you don’t think that’s weird.
Unhealthy relationship with caffeine (bonus points for other substances too)
At least one fucked-up bone or joint
There’s some Liquid Nails or silicone caulk stuck in your favorite work shirt
Your hearing isn’t as good as it used to be
Regular porta-shitter use
If two or more of these fit your lifestyle, you may be a provider of housing.
Even if we build cheap apartments for the homeless and fully fund it with tax payer money it actually saves tax payer money and gets the homeless out of the already over stressed healthcare system.
Most homeless are in and out of the hospital for easily preventable diagnosis that is a direct result of living on the street. This would free up a bed in the ED, free up a bed in acute care if admitted, and free up urgent care and other EMT resources.
This has been studied for YEARS. We know the answer to directly solving this without even trying to fix the other systemic issues at play here.
However, having a homeless population is good for capitalism. It’s an area where an employer can point to and say, “If you don’t work for pennies on the dollar, you’ll end up there.”
Seriously. I think the solution to the homeless crisis is to build what amounts to government-funded dorms for adults. 2-3 people to a room; literally just like a college dorm. Basic shelter for anyone who needs it, but a degree of privacy you don’t get with homeless shelters. You have roommates, but only one or two, and you get a place to safely store things. And the price would be affordable enough that the state can provide this shelter for anyone who needs it.
And a final benefit of this kind of spartan housing arrangements is that you can ensure only those who need it will take advantage of it. You don’t need to go to elaborate lengths to verify eligibility. You don’t need to have harsh income-based cutoffs. Most people do not want to live in a dorm room their whole life. That alone will ensure that only those who really need it will seek it out.
You have roommates, but only one or two, and you get a place to safely store things.
These clauses are mutually exclusive. Has to be accessible only by one tenant for actual privacy and security, that’s one of the complaints against existing shelters. Also, “make the housing just shitty enough that it might be better than sleeping outside” as a replacement for means-testing and incentive not to rely on it is diarespectful. Just provide standard studio apartments, tiny homes, or literally whatever vacant property is available and stop trying to find the minimum acceptable dehumanizing conditions.
I don’t think asking homeless people to live in the same conditions college students all across the country live in is unacceptable or dehumanizing. And yes, you can have some degree of privacy. Having one or two long term roommates is a world apart from sleeping in a big room with dozens of strangers. It is disrespectful to every person who has ever lived in a college dorm to say that such housing is unacceptable or subpar.
You’re letting perfect be the enemy of the good, and you’re ignoring the actual politics of getting this kind of broad program passed. This is the kind of program that could actually gain political traction in an American political context. Giving anyone who wants one a tiny home or condo is not going to be viable. You can’t offer people free accommodations that are superior to those that a substantial portion of the electorate enjoys, not if you want to win office.
And resources fundamentally are limited. Yes, it would be great to buy everyone a three bedroom single family house. But that’s just not viable financially. Offering people a shelter of last resort, so no on ever has to sleep on the street again? That’s something that can be done, but only if you actually control the costs. And dorm-type housing can be built for a fraction of the cost of apartment-type housing, simply because the space is shared.
Most college students are, functionally if not legally, still children. And dormitories are an efficient way to provide housing for a large group in a concentrated area. Neither case can or should apply broadly to the unhoused.
Sharing space with a stranger is a great way to get robbed or just made uncomfortable with no recourse. Students have RAs and can apply to live alone, off-campus, or swap dorms. Your theoretical slumblock going to have that flexibility? Nevermind that a single-purpose housing complex is just an instant ghetto. Best outcomes come from integration, not segregation.
The current American political climate is fucking hostile and watering down any movement to try and fit in is the wrong call. It’s like haggling by starting with concessions. And why couldn’t it be viable? It isn’t luxury housing I support. Most people have some amount of personal pride and don’t want to subsist on welfare if they have another option, and I’m perfectly happy to let some people permanently use those properties if it lessens the strain on public resources for everyone else.
Letting people suffer just to get (re)elected is intolerable.
Reources are artificially limited. There are more vacant houses in this country than homeless people. We don’t need to build new complexes to sweep the problem into one neat pile, just start seizing vacant lots held by absent investors. It wouod be cheaper than the police and medical costs we’re currently paying. Ideally pair this radical housing initiative with job training programs, optional rehab/drug counseling, mental healthcare, and other slightly-left-of-global-center communist ideas.
One little problem you aren’t accounting for.
Give houses to newcomers for not being self sufficient, then you’ll be attracting even more newcomers. The cycle continues.
Now, with 2nd generation immigrants, this is a good investment. Especially in aging countries such as mine.
But yeah you’re not taking in future expenses into account with your idea there.
The current amount of homeless, are there to scarecrow the potential amount of homeless away.
It’s more sane, as a society, to reduce this to refugees only.
Giving economic immigrants a free house… that’s just insane
Nobody was talking about immigrants before you did. Not sure what your point is.
Idk how it’s in your country but in my country the homeless are illegal immigrants
Sad that people want to go to your country, even if they will be homeless. Sad they find no compassion there.
In my country, the immigrants are very slightly less likely to be homeless. Little compassion here either.The rules are simple. If you want to be in Belgium, be self sufficient until you have nationality. Unless refugee, then you get social housing.
Most of our immigrants come through family reunification. Their family member can only get them here if he or she has enough income and housing.
They sign a paper to say that the government can deduct money from the family member’s account if the immigrant requires help from our social services for income.
Then when the immigrant requests income from the state, the residence card is lost.
If that person does not leave the country, will become an illegal immigrant. Then will likely become homeless.
The rules are there to diminish the burden on the state.
Switzerland has 30% immigrants, Singapore is all about immigrants, Dubai as well. I don’t think these places have any compassion. High cost of living. If not self sufficient, then they prefer the spot to be taken by an immigrant that will be self sufficient.
It’s selfish, but important in order to keep our country from going into a crisis.
Legal immigration is easy. My wife went to Jakarta. Got EU tourist visa. We went to city hall. I presented proof of housing, payslips of past few months, national health insurance.
We got married. She got orange card, could start working. Can’t find a job.
Then because I still have my job, my wife gets F card after 6 months.
She did 2 classes to learn Dutch. Some social integration class. Found a job that is 2/3rd subsidised by government.
All legal. It’s easy. To become an illegal immigrant, you need to do some heavy lifting.
Is it? Immigrants get jobs and pay taxes. Economic immigration can be a great economic boon if managed properly. It might be possible to generate consistent returns on investment by providing shelter, food, education and training.
A lot of economic immigrants don’t have jobs.
It’s quite difficult to get a job when everything is in a language you are at most new to.
I went to 30 headhunter firms with my wife, they all showed us the door when they realised she doesn’t speak Dutch.
Her job is cleaning. Subsidised 66% by the government (taxes). Client pays 10 euros, my wife gets 15 euros. The company gets 30 euros per hour.
She has a fucking law degree from a top 5% university in her country.
Immigration depends a lot on language, or the lingual infrastructure of the country.
2 ways. Either Belgium decides to turn English into an official language and creates an environment where English is the only language needed, or the immigrant learns Dutch.
Learning Dutch takes years.
My coworker her mom lives here for 30 years and doesn’t speak Dutch. Her aunt speaks our language fluently.
It depends on the person, but in general it’s not to be underestimated.
My wife is just going to be half time worker. Better that I work full time and that she takes care of our kid a bit more while I work full time.
My wife doesn’t pay any taxes.
As I said priorly. The real deal here is the 2nd generation. Those can be educated in belgium for the Belgian economy. Big gains for the economy.
If I go to Indonesia, what am I gonna do lol. Idk anything about indonesian stuff. There my wife would have to be the breadwinner while I just look for a job in Singapore or an English company in Batam.
I’m bit lucky that accountancy is more globalised. Law is very specific. You’re supposed to specialise and then make that your career.
That’s crazy: there are cleaners who speak the language? I thought this was a stereotypical job for immigrants because you don’t need special skills or credentials nor have to know the language. The skills are basic; you just need to work hard, be reliable and figure out how to get fast at it
The cleaners that know the language… idk mate, higher education costs 1 month’s minimum wage to fund a whole bachelor’s.
Achieving the bachelor takes effort though. The job that you get with the bachelor also is more difficult to do. More stressful.
Doesn’t really pay much more. Maybe 200 euros?
Minimum wage pays barely any taxes. While the “discount on tax” is lost as you climb the ladder.
At 3250 euros gross wage I get 2250 euros net.
At minimum wage, 2050 euros. They get 2000 euros net.
It’s not a big deal. Of course my wage will keep growing, while theirs will stagnate.
But complacency is quite the drug.
A lot of natives also don’t have jobs. Shall we kick those out too?
And if not, why do they get preferential treatment? They cost the country a lot more money than immigrants.
First of all, there wasn’t anything said about kicking people out. Just not giving them houses, in order to make the place less attractive for future immigrants that aren’t self sufficient.
Second of all. I wouldn’t give a shit if the people taking advantage of our country’s massive welfare would be kicked out.
I know plenty of people who prefer to have no money just so that they can keep enjoying social discounts and sick money/unemployment money/living wages.
These people are abled. They just don’t give A FUCK that their kids have 0 inheritance.
In a country with median net wealth of 250k euros per adult. Fucking embarrassing. Gigantic social mobility here.
Oh no, learning the language of the country you immigrate to, the horror
Make it a requirement of continuing occupancy. Must be taking classes or working. Classes are free.
Still takes years to learn the language with those classes and these classes are social transfers to the immigrants, but a good investment with return.
The requirement is neither of those things. The requirement is self sufficiency.
If you’re rich enough, then I don’t care if you don’t learn the language and that you don’t work.
You’re spending into our economy with likely passive income coming from your global investments.
Or you have family members that take care of your cost of living. All fine.
If you want to have a job, then as I priorly stated. Either in Dutch or English.
Both would work. If the infrastructure is in English, then the ability to make immigrants self sufficient becomes a lot easier. Good for our economy.
If we don’t want to do these investments, then the immigrant needs to learn Dutch.
Those are the only options.
My wife speaks English at her job. Did 2 Dutch classes. Most of the people in flanders speak English so communication goes well.
Ego of natives to be spoken to by their preferred language is economically irrelevant so I ignore that.
The premise of this discussion was economic refugees, so I assumed we were only talking about those who are not self-sufficient.
These people can’t legally enter the country as far as I’m aware. So yeah, they become homeless.
Giving money to economic refugees that aren’t self sufficient is just… at best, turning them into baby factories for next generation worker bees.
My country has an aging population, perhaps it’s beneficial? Not sure.
Actually it’s easy to see if it’s beneficial. Look at social refugees. Their kids get higher education.
There’s enough war in the world though. We don’t need economic refugees on top of the social refugees.
But then again, need to question how easy those economic refugees are to integrate.
They aren’t traumatised by war, so it should be easier.
A lot of angles to look from
I am accounting for newcomers and not being self sufficient.
In the studies and actual use cases where places have done this the homeless person is getting a 300-500sqft apartment. It’s enough to get off the street have a clean bed and running water. They can then get a job and work their way out.
The reason this works is because once you have a decent income and want to start enjoying life you can’t do that in a 300-500sqft apartment.
This isn’t just shit I’m making up, there have been cities that have done this and it fucking works.
Can you link the source then, thanks
I can provide a few, but honestly so many cities have done this, tried to do part of it and failed/succeeded, or are working on plans to do this. Portland Oregon for example had success with a homeless program that puts people in little 15x15ft sheds. It’s not much, but it’s a start and some have moved on to their own apartment. Years ago a city in Utah (I think), built a small apartment and did a study to determine it was more cost effective to provide housing than let them clog up the Healthcare and EMS resources.
One study found an average cost savings on emergency services of $31,545 per person housed in a Housing First program over the course of two years. Another study showed that a Housing First program could cost up to $23,000 less per consumer per year than a shelter program.
- Housing First
- Coalition for the Homeless
- PBS article comparing two cities
- National Alliance to End Homelessness
Here is a list of studies from the last link. Each pebble is a study with links and sources
Again, this is not something I’m just saying or making up. This has hard data backed evidence to support it.
Those 31,5k USD saved is because you don’t let them die.
My source is comparing first generation non EU immigrants their taxes to the social transfers they receive. It’s a net loss.
As I stated, it’s the 2nd generation where it’s at.
Those are the worker bees.
If these people were self sufficient then they wouldn’t have been homeless. It takes massive investments. And guess what? It pays off in the 2nd generation.
Okay, so don’t read any of the sources and stay ignorant. Homelessness can be a result of a multitude of factors and not all of them are only illegal immigrants who can’t be self-sufficient.
No where in any of the sources does it say the cost saved was because “they didn’t die”. It’s clear this goes far beyond your ability to understand and comprehend complex systems of cost analysis. You ask for sources then ignore them. Get bent.
The 31,5k USD was because of emergency services lol. What do you think emergency services are? Goes to hospital. By law cannot be refused treatment. It’s expensive.
Being housed prevents needing those medical services that cannot be refused. Hence it’s cheaper to house someone.
The cheapest option is to let them die.
Social housing isn’t about getting people to be self sufficient. It’s just about giving them a comfortable life.
The return on investment comes from their children. Not the parents.
if you want to show a source that it’s good for the economy. Then show one where the person’s taxes outweigh their social transfers.
Which is difficult to do for older people. They need investments, then they do low paying jobs. The difference between their low paying jobs and doing nothing is basically the same amount of income.
So they don’t have much motivation. Their income during their work life is low, then they get a pension. Net loss for government.
Their kids however. They went to school at a young age, get higher education. They get a well paying job. Very profitable.
We have social housing here in Belgium, you get it after waiting 2 years. Which means… only the chronic low income people get it. They usually die in it. Cheap rent.
Here you don’t become homeless easily. You have unemployment benefits. You don’t get medical bankruptcy. You get living wage. Blablabla
Temporary income shocks are completely taken by social security. These people don’t get social housing because they can just continue paying their mortgage or rent.
So you already need to take these people out of your studies. Because yeah, giving housing to short term homeless people will be very beneficial. They just are in-between jobs.
Now, the ones that have social housing, there’s something wrong there. They aren’t self sufficient because of chronic reasons. These people will worsen the results of your studies.
It’s like looking at immigration studies and including the EU immigrants with the non EU immigrants. While one part obviously scores better than the other.
Housing the homeless is a good idea, but doing it in a random, hap-hazard way is dangerous.
Govt takes over a block of brownstones, and throws a bunch of random people off the street with abuse/violence/psychological issues in them as fast as possible for six months, it’s a recipe for disaster.
You have to be careful about housing people as a government, you become (at least partially) responsible for their actions. Somebody starts cooking meth on an end unit and all of a sudden you have a fire that kills 30 people.
When the govt plans housing they can take flammability, safety, and location into consideration. If you’re just buying up slums to rehab, most of that goes out the window.
They need to invest in group homes for the people you are describing. One well paid housekeeper oversees 5-10 mixable homeless people. By mixable I mean not mixing those with mental issues in with drug users, etc. This is now impossible to hope for in the US with the horrifically cruel “religious conservative” party in control.
Based I think the same thing should be done to retail stores. If you can’t get people to rent it. Force a sale of the building
Retail stores are dying because of cars. Every time the data shows: parking spaces decrease business, bike lanes and train stations increase it.
Stores are failing because the land they’re on isn’t useful. Cars have poisoned it.
This is something I find baffling.
In my city, it’s generally a hotspot with dramatically increasing real estate costs and high occupancy, generally.
Except this one road, which has all sorts of vacant retail, with different owners, with thriving retail and/or residential pretty much everywhere around it. Even the gas stations are 50c a gallon cheaper there then going a mile north or south of it. I have no idea why that one road is different and looking like a dying city while being surrounded by exactly the opposite.
Why pay 40% market value?
How about this instead. If we continue to have rent and landlords, let’s make a market incentive to lower prices.
Tax empty housing at a rate proportional to the advertised rental rate. Example, if a landlord has an unused unit listed for 1500 a month, they pay an empty housing penalty of, let’s arbitrarily say 20%. Now they have an incentive to fill the unit at a lower price. They can no longer just price-gouge with their competitors to drive up rates. What do we do with the money we receive from those penalties? We provide housing assistance. So now the top and the bottom of the market start to balance each other out. Here’s the real cool thing about this system, you can tie that penalty rate to the number of housing-insecure or unhoused people in the population. Now we can have a self-regulating system that provides an incentive to push rental rates down, but also gives low-income renters more money to rent with.
