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This sounds like a really nice idea that is 20 years away from being a horrific disenfranchising one. Owning the land is an important piece of wealth transfer f

This sounds like a really nice idea that is 20 years away from being a horrific disenfranchising one. Owning the land is an important piece of wealth transfer from generation to generation. This reminds me of the situation in NC and other parts of the south where minority communities are starting to lose control of the land there families due to a bunch of loop holes. There the problem is that due to lack of paper trails ownership is murky and often reverts back to the city who then sells it away to the highest bidder (often developers who displace the people who have been there). What happens 20 - 30 years from now when this non profit has shuttered and the land is now owned by some random bank? It's great that the land lease is transferable to heirs but this just has all the makings of a looming disasters

badrabbit 6y ago
99 year leases are common in many countries. You still get equity and you can still sell the house. If you don't sell before the lease is up and they don't renew the lease, they still need to compensate for the value of the house before kicking you out.
- subpixel 6y ago
  There is a cap on what you can resell the house for, so this is not a way to get rich in real estate. It's interesting how many commenters seem to think that renders this model ineffective. "If nobody can get rich in this game, nobody should play" is an odd way to look at this program, which is about helping renters graduate to home ownership while protecting their community from speculative capital.
  - badrabbit 6y ago
    I agree that real estate shouldn't enable a "get rich easy" scheme,it maligns incentives of everyone involved.
  - beerandt 6y ago
    It's preventing these people from benefiting from the very mechanism they claim put them at a disadvantage in the first place. Why not teach them the ropes of how to benefit like everyone else is? Telling them not to play the game at all while everyone else continues to doesn't help anyone long term. Even worse, they're paying essentially the same mortgage (a slightly discounted one) but will see a fraction of the proportional benefit as their neighbors do, when it comes time to sell. Then it will be just another way that the system is set against them to get ahead.
- fastball 6y ago
  You can't sell the house. You can sell the lease. In the end, this house reverts back to whichever wealthy family already owned it, so that this family gets wealthier and wealthier over time. Leasehold is a terrible concept leftover from feudalism.
  - markdown 6y ago
    In my country, 93% of the land is communally owned by the people indigenous to this place. The only way for an individual to access this land is via leases of 30, 50, or 99 years.
jseliger 6y ago
Over the course of US history, housing costs match GDP growth. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3. Housing is first and foremost a place to live; financializing it has really been a big effort (and mistake) since the '70s. https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-the-1970s/ https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-...
DeathArrow 6y ago
>What happens 20 - 30 years from now when this non profit has shuttered and the land is now owned by some random bank? In my country some cities offered 49 years or 99 years of lease on land to people willing to build homes. Since the land is owned by the city there's no much concern it will got in hands of banks.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  That sounds amazing. In my current country and that of my birth you have to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to build anything, at least at the scale an individual can manage to build.
CalRobert 6y ago
"Owning the land is an important piece of wealth transfer from generation to generation" It's worth questioning whether this is a desirable goal. I'm not saying it is or isn't, but I don't think it would be universally accepted. At the risk of being grim, I stand to inherit a gorgeous home near Monterey purchased by my grandparents in the 1950's that I could never, ever afford now - and with prop 13 I could continue to afford it. But is that good? I wouldn't even live there full time. Maybe someone else could make better use of that land, but the current tax system enables me to keep it as a luxury when someone else might want it as a necessity (a home). Eventually, of course, it will go to someone else, as a logical consequence of not being a chain of only children, so there is that. It's also worth considering that "owning" land is a little bit strange in the sense that if it's in a location that can support life reasonably comfortably (fresh water, decent soil) and isn't inhabited by aboriginal people, the paper trail goes back to "someone just took it from the inhabitants" which puts modern claims on shaky grounds. Though all of this is kind of secondary to the fact that we made it damn near illegal to build new homes near good jobs.
- imtringued 6y ago
  >which puts modern claims on shaky grounds. Do those aboriginal people have an army that can reconquer the land? If not, then the shaky grounds aren't that shaky. We still live in an environment where the rule "might makes right" still applies. Don't forget that.
  - snidane 6y ago
    > We still live in an environment where the rule "might makes right" still applies Which is correct. You have to draw the line somewhere when one civilization replaces another. What is not ok when this rule applies within a civilization - you get a class struggle when one faction uses their (political) might to acquire land with an advantage. As the parent says - land ownership as a concept is shaky and its infinite transfer over generations even more so because you tend to accumulate errors of unethically acquired land with time. What actually is fair is a continual payment for land use to the community through government for the fact that they guarantee you, but nobody else, to use the land. On Netflix you pay monthly fee for the service. Our land system is akin to purchasing an expensive perpetual Netflix license with infinite amount of transfers to your descendants through inheritance. What if you knew somebody inside Netflix and they give you this cool package somehow for very cheap? This is the situation with our land systems - they are separating social classes by design - with long time convergence to aristocratic and serf classes.
tareqak 6y ago
There could be a rule that states that if the land trust becomes bankrupt, then the land in question becomes the property of the title holders owning the home on top of it. This idea could have issues in itself with respect to incentives, but hopefully it could prevent people having the rug pulled from underneath them.

badrabbit 6y ago

99 year leases are common in many countries. You still get equity and you can still sell the house. If you don't sell before the lease is up and they don't renew the lease, they still need to compensate for the value of the house before kicking you out.

subpixel 6y ago
There is a cap on what you can resell the house for, so this is not a way to get rich in real estate. It's interesting how many commenters seem to think that renders this model ineffective. "If nobody can get rich in this game, nobody should play" is an odd way to look at this program, which is about helping renters graduate to home ownership while protecting their community from speculative capital.
- badrabbit 6y ago
  I agree that real estate shouldn't enable a "get rich easy" scheme,it maligns incentives of everyone involved.
- beerandt 6y ago
  It's preventing these people from benefiting from the very mechanism they claim put them at a disadvantage in the first place. Why not teach them the ropes of how to benefit like everyone else is? Telling them not to play the game at all while everyone else continues to doesn't help anyone long term. Even worse, they're paying essentially the same mortgage (a slightly discounted one) but will see a fraction of the proportional benefit as their neighbors do, when it comes time to sell. Then it will be just another way that the system is set against them to get ahead.
fastball 6y ago
You can't sell the house. You can sell the lease. In the end, this house reverts back to whichever wealthy family already owned it, so that this family gets wealthier and wealthier over time. Leasehold is a terrible concept leftover from feudalism.
- markdown 6y ago
  In my country, 93% of the land is communally owned by the people indigenous to this place. The only way for an individual to access this land is via leases of 30, 50, or 99 years.

jseliger 6y ago

Over the course of US history, housing costs match GDP growth. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3. Housing is first and foremost a place to live; financializing it has really been a big effort (and mistake) since the '70s. https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-the-1970s/ https://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-...

DeathArrow 6y ago

>What happens 20 - 30 years from now when this non profit has shuttered and the land is now owned by some random bank? In my country some cities offered 49 years or 99 years of lease on land to people willing to build homes. Since the land is owned by the city there's no much concern it will got in hands of banks.

CalRobert 6y ago
That sounds amazing. In my current country and that of my birth you have to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to build anything, at least at the scale an individual can manage to build.

CalRobert 6y ago

"Owning the land is an important piece of wealth transfer from generation to generation" It's worth questioning whether this is a desirable goal. I'm not saying it is or isn't, but I don't think it would be universally accepted. At the risk of being grim, I stand to inherit a gorgeous home near Monterey purchased by my grandparents in the 1950's that I could never, ever afford now - and with prop 13 I could continue to afford it. But is that good? I wouldn't even live there full time. Maybe someone else could make better use of that land, but the current tax system enables me to keep it as a luxury when someone else might want it as a necessity (a home). Eventually, of course, it will go to someone else, as a logical consequence of not being a chain of only children, so there is that. It's also worth considering that "owning" land is a little bit strange in the sense that if it's in a location that can support life reasonably comfortably (fresh water, decent soil) and isn't inhabited by aboriginal people, the paper trail goes back to "someone just took it from the inhabitants" which puts modern claims on shaky grounds. Though all of this is kind of secondary to the fact that we made it damn near illegal to build new homes near good jobs.

imtringued 6y ago
>which puts modern claims on shaky grounds. Do those aboriginal people have an army that can reconquer the land? If not, then the shaky grounds aren't that shaky. We still live in an environment where the rule "might makes right" still applies. Don't forget that.
- snidane 6y ago
  > We still live in an environment where the rule "might makes right" still applies Which is correct. You have to draw the line somewhere when one civilization replaces another. What is not ok when this rule applies within a civilization - you get a class struggle when one faction uses their (political) might to acquire land with an advantage. As the parent says - land ownership as a concept is shaky and its infinite transfer over generations even more so because you tend to accumulate errors of unethically acquired land with time. What actually is fair is a continual payment for land use to the community through government for the fact that they guarantee you, but nobody else, to use the land. On Netflix you pay monthly fee for the service. Our land system is akin to purchasing an expensive perpetual Netflix license with infinite amount of transfers to your descendants through inheritance. What if you knew somebody inside Netflix and they give you this cool package somehow for very cheap? This is the situation with our land systems - they are separating social classes by design - with long time convergence to aristocratic and serf classes.

tareqak 6y ago

There could be a rule that states that if the land trust becomes bankrupt, then the land in question becomes the property of the title holders owning the home on top of it. This idea could have issues in itself with respect to incentives, but hopefully it could prevent people having the rug pulled from underneath them.