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Everyone likes the idea of carrots. But I prefer sticks. Landowners get windfall gains from surrounding development and government services. We should have a h
by nwah1 11y ago
Everyone likes the idea of carrots. But I prefer sticks.
Landowners get windfall gains from surrounding development and government services. We should have a high land value tax, to tax these unearned gains, which would ensure that only people able to make productive use of prime land will hold onto it.
For instance, a subway stop will boost the surrounding land value of every property by hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet everyone else is footing the bill for it. And worse, if the taxes are low enough, landowners can, in effect, hold that prime land for ransom, and do nothing with it. https://vimeo.com/32548658 https://vimeo.com/32548658
- cyber 11y agoExcepting that in SF the "everyone" does not want the land owners to make productive use of it: they want the status quo. (Well, the status quo of what the remember as being the "high point".) Having witnessed protests that occurred midway through the reconstruction of offramps, (meaning an existing ramp was torn down, and they were half done rebuilding it), it's not so much NIMBY, but NBAA: Never Build Anything, Anywhere. The only way that higher taxes would be beneficial is if SF landowners were actually allowed the freedom to upgrade their properties. Zoning, especially height restrictions (40' max over most of SF), as well as endless red tape, make it really hard to make productive use of prime land. Regardless if it's the original owner or new buyer. ( A new buyer is granted some slight advantage, but not enough to be meaningful.)