If I were king of the country, I would institute a federal property tax on single-family homes that is equal to the state property tax times the number of homes

If I were king of the country, I would institute a federal property tax on single-family homes that is equal to the state property tax times the number of homes that you own for as long as homelessness is over 0.05%. Right now, we're at 0.2%, so homelessness would need to be reduced 75% in order to obviate the tax. Further, if a non-human, non-bank entity was listed as the owner of the home there would be an automatic additional federal 2x state property tax fee on the property as well. These tax payments would further not qualify to reduce the taxes owed on your other incomes. Banks and other such lending agencies would only be subject to the property tax penalty if they did not list the home for sale at fair market value within 60 days of acquiring the deed and they would be required to accept an offer that met the fair market value requirement. (i.e., if they only got bids for $50k under fair market value, then they wouldn't be required to accept those bids). The monies generated would be used to fund anti-homelessness measures across the country. This would make it unbearably onerous to own more than 2 homes for all but the richest Americans, and it would make it so that people who are using real estate ownership as an income producing machine would lose out on that income. This decree would be set to roll out over a 4 year period to give the mom and pop airbnbers and other non-financially entrenched in the real estate market companies time to liquidate their equity in the housing market. Those companies that are fully dependent on rental income from single-family homes would have no motivation to purchase the newer homes on the market as each additional home would add a federal 1X multiplier to their tax burden, housing would decrease in value, more people would be able to buy in, apartments and multi-family homes would become more readily available and the prices would decrease, more people would be able to afford to rent an apartment, and fewer people would be homeless. That's a win all around except for any company that fills its pockets by sleeping on its horde of unused homes like ancient dragons and ill-gotten gold.