4 ms·

Aren’t they rotting because the owner defaulted and wouldn’t be able to pay further punishments anyway? If you’re 500k in the hole, how is a 5k tax going to do

Aren’t they rotting because the owner defaulted and wouldn’t be able to pay further punishments anyway? If you’re 500k in the hole, how is a 5k tax going to do anything?

hindsightbias 6y ago
No, they rotted because no one wanted to live there. Whereas, everyone, their dog and dead grandmother wants to live in YVR.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  It's so weird that people find it hard to see a rotted mansion as a policy failure. That's straight up economic waste. It's like dumping milk to support the market price, even if people are hungry. Detroit isn't abandoned. It just doesn't have rich people, and banks were too aggressive in their pricing of foreclosed properties. Now those properties have all rotted. Economic waste should be severely penalized in the tax code.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Detroit needed to shed its obligations before even a free house or land made sense for many people. The government’s obligations were made with the assumption that population (and economic) growth would continue. It did the opposite, and you simply can’t operate a business (or government) where more than half of your revenue is gone and your expenses keep rising. Just like you wouldn’t invest in a business laden with outsized debt obligations from projections that didn’t come true, you wouldn’t want to put your name on a title to take on the obligations of a city who had lost 50%+ of its people and revenue. Supposedly, this was attempted to be fixed in 2014’s bankruptcy rulings, so we’ll have to see if that brought the expenses in line to make it a worthwhile investment.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      The house is a real physical thing. Obligations, debt, bankruptcies, these are all abstractions. Ideally the abstractions should lead to the real physical things being taken care of. If they don't, something may be wrong with the abstractions. But we should be clear that there will always be some waste, so the question is if waste is higher than it needs to be.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Yes, but that didn’t happen until 2014, while the economic realities were clear to investors (including people deciding where to live and raise families) for decades already. Unfortunately, the political machine can move slower than society needs it to and in the meantime, the infrastructure and real physical things degrade.
- chrisbennet 6y ago
  YVR=Vancouver I had to look it up.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
r00fus 6y ago
Luckily that’s not Vancouver’s problem.
aaomidi 6y ago
The bank would be forced to sell it or keep paying the 5000 tax at that point. Which would circulate housing faster through banks. It might even make banks be willing to work for better payment plans for the people owing debt.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Aren’t they rotting because the owner defaulted and wouldn’t be able to pay further punishments anyway? If you’re 500k in the hole, how is a 5k tax going to do anything?

hindsightbias 6y ago

No, they rotted because no one wanted to live there. Whereas, everyone, their dog and dead grandmother wants to live in YVR.

rmrfstar 6y ago
It's so weird that people find it hard to see a rotted mansion as a policy failure. That's straight up economic waste. It's like dumping milk to support the market price, even if people are hungry. Detroit isn't abandoned. It just doesn't have rich people, and banks were too aggressive in their pricing of foreclosed properties. Now those properties have all rotted. Economic waste should be severely penalized in the tax code.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Detroit needed to shed its obligations before even a free house or land made sense for many people. The government’s obligations were made with the assumption that population (and economic) growth would continue. It did the opposite, and you simply can’t operate a business (or government) where more than half of your revenue is gone and your expenses keep rising. Just like you wouldn’t invest in a business laden with outsized debt obligations from projections that didn’t come true, you wouldn’t want to put your name on a title to take on the obligations of a city who had lost 50%+ of its people and revenue. Supposedly, this was attempted to be fixed in 2014’s bankruptcy rulings, so we’ll have to see if that brought the expenses in line to make it a worthwhile investment.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    The house is a real physical thing. Obligations, debt, bankruptcies, these are all abstractions. Ideally the abstractions should lead to the real physical things being taken care of. If they don't, something may be wrong with the abstractions. But we should be clear that there will always be some waste, so the question is if waste is higher than it needs to be.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Yes, but that didn’t happen until 2014, while the economic realities were clear to investors (including people deciding where to live and raise families) for decades already. Unfortunately, the political machine can move slower than society needs it to and in the meantime, the infrastructure and real physical things degrade.
chrisbennet 6y ago
YVR=Vancouver I had to look it up.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

r00fus 6y ago

Luckily that’s not Vancouver’s problem.

aaomidi 6y ago

The bank would be forced to sell it or keep paying the 5000 tax at that point. Which would circulate housing faster through banks. It might even make banks be willing to work for better payment plans for the people owing debt.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]