4 ms·

> This is pretty much the crux of it. High housing prices could be "fixed" almost overnight, but for almost every citizen of the first world, their house is the

> This is pretty much the crux of it. High housing prices could be "fixed" almost overnight, but for almost every citizen of the first world, their house is the single biggest investment they will ever make in their life. You'd be destroying everyone's retirement plans and there'd be major economic repercussions. I wonder if one way out would be to 1) build government rental-housing projects again, to fill the immediate housing need, and 2) implement other policies to increase home-building (but only enough to keep price increases below inflation). One serious problem would be the association of housing projects with crime and poverty, but maybe that could be addressed by putting police stations on the first floor (or something) and eminent-domaining them into upscale areas over luxury housing.

mjmahone17 4y ago
Yes but 1 is a huge, massive, often insurmountable political battle because there are enough single-issue voters who will turn on any politician who threatens to enable “undesirable” types to share their neighborhood. And 2 is blocked by people who think their aesthetic preferences are more important than others ability to survive (often the same people as blocking 1). It’s not really the crime that matters, at the core, but rather the perception of “other”. The single-issue anti-housing people don’t want police in their neighborhoods, they want police in other people’s neighborhoods keeping those people out of the “nice” neighborhoods. Sadly, most people do in fact want more housing for people who are less well off than them, even if it means they have to run shoulders with strangers. But these are the people who work and don’t have time to show up to community meetings about a new apartment going up, and don’t usually decide who to vote for based on neighborhood aesthetics. Because the problem is mostly political, most of the solution is political as well: identify, train and support local politicians who will vote to build more housing, and help them write new laws that do so. And convince them (by consistently winning at the ballot box) that the anti-housing crowd is loud but not actually large, so there’s little danger in losing their votes.
j_heffe 4y ago
> build government rental-housing projects again It's a cultural thing too. We're brainwashed to look down on government housing simply because of the racist practices of the past. It wouldn't even have to be government funded necessarily. The problem could be fixed with non-market housing similar to Europe, where the building costs are fulfilled by a loan, and the HOA or housing entity is setup without the goal of making a profit off the rent, setting rental rates at a margin to cover only the loan and necessary expenses.
ff317 4y ago
Seems like it would be simpler to fix this with regulation on housing "investment". Don't allow large corporations to buy up giant counts of single family homes (taking them off the market and jacking up real estate bubbles). Basically we need to stop the predatory act of spending billions to buy many thousands of houses out of the market just to turn around and rent them to those who can no longer afford to buy in the market they're effectively cornering. Some builders are now building whole neighborhoods full of single-family homes that are being sold directly to rental investment companies from the outset. My off the cuff (and thus probably naive) thought would be to charge progressive federal taxes on home ownership which progresses based on the unit count owned by an entity. Whether you're an individual or a corporation: your first house is free (0% federal tax). If you own two houses, you pay 3% on the value (of both houses) every year for the right to own them. Maybe at three houses it's already at 10%, and by the time you get to ~10 houses owned, it caps out at 100% tax on the value every year, making large-scale home investing completely unprofitable. The funds from this new tax could be set aside specifically to fund affordable housing programs of some kind. Under such a scheme, we'd still have rising prices from true single-owner-occupiers under the existing system, but it would slow down and be less-bubbly, at least in the national average, and builders will eventually build new homes to equilibrium, where regulations allow them to. Some moderately-wealthy people could probably still own a second vacation home, or 2-3 rental properties. Some extremely wealthy people might still own 10+ different homes for personal/family use at exorbitant tax cost, but at least the taxes from such scenarios go towards fixing things.

mjmahone17 4y ago

Yes but 1 is a huge, massive, often insurmountable political battle because there are enough single-issue voters who will turn on any politician who threatens to enable “undesirable” types to share their neighborhood. And 2 is blocked by people who think their aesthetic preferences are more important than others ability to survive (often the same people as blocking 1). It’s not really the crime that matters, at the core, but rather the perception of “other”. The single-issue anti-housing people don’t want police in their neighborhoods, they want police in other people’s neighborhoods keeping those people out of the “nice” neighborhoods. Sadly, most people do in fact want more housing for people who are less well off than them, even if it means they have to run shoulders with strangers. But these are the people who work and don’t have time to show up to community meetings about a new apartment going up, and don’t usually decide who to vote for based on neighborhood aesthetics. Because the problem is mostly political, most of the solution is political as well: identify, train and support local politicians who will vote to build more housing, and help them write new laws that do so. And convince them (by consistently winning at the ballot box) that the anti-housing crowd is loud but not actually large, so there’s little danger in losing their votes.

j_heffe 4y ago

> build government rental-housing projects again It's a cultural thing too. We're brainwashed to look down on government housing simply because of the racist practices of the past. It wouldn't even have to be government funded necessarily. The problem could be fixed with non-market housing similar to Europe, where the building costs are fulfilled by a loan, and the HOA or housing entity is setup without the goal of making a profit off the rent, setting rental rates at a margin to cover only the loan and necessary expenses.

ff317 4y ago

Seems like it would be simpler to fix this with regulation on housing "investment". Don't allow large corporations to buy up giant counts of single family homes (taking them off the market and jacking up real estate bubbles). Basically we need to stop the predatory act of spending billions to buy many thousands of houses out of the market just to turn around and rent them to those who can no longer afford to buy in the market they're effectively cornering. Some builders are now building whole neighborhoods full of single-family homes that are being sold directly to rental investment companies from the outset. My off the cuff (and thus probably naive) thought would be to charge progressive federal taxes on home ownership which progresses based on the unit count owned by an entity. Whether you're an individual or a corporation: your first house is free (0% federal tax). If you own two houses, you pay 3% on the value (of both houses) every year for the right to own them. Maybe at three houses it's already at 10%, and by the time you get to ~10 houses owned, it caps out at 100% tax on the value every year, making large-scale home investing completely unprofitable. The funds from this new tax could be set aside specifically to fund affordable housing programs of some kind. Under such a scheme, we'd still have rising prices from true single-owner-occupiers under the existing system, but it would slow down and be less-bubbly, at least in the national average, and builders will eventually build new homes to equilibrium, where regulations allow them to. Some moderately-wealthy people could probably still own a second vacation home, or 2-3 rental properties. Some extremely wealthy people might still own 10+ different homes for personal/family use at exorbitant tax cost, but at least the taxes from such scenarios go towards fixing things.