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Ask HN: Why don't cities have maintenance free neighborhoods via higher taxes?
Some house owners may prefer to pay higher property taxes to have the city take care of all maintenance of their houses.
And if an entire neighborhood is like that, then maintenance can be done by the city in a more cost effective way.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- uberman 4y agoyou mean like a homeowner's association?
- amichail 4y agoThe idea is that you can own a house and not worry about it. All maintenance (e.g., keeping your furnace in good shape, etc.) would be handled on your part so you don't have to think about it.
- Someone 4y agoI guess you would not want the maintainer to pick a time to clean your furnace or to decide how often to paint the woodwork, etc. without your involvement. If so, you’d still have to think about maintenance. If not, you want something like a butler. Those are expensive. You also can rent a house to get rid of the maintenance chores and optionally invest in housing if you want to get the market gains/losses of the housing market. Finally, why would cities have to provide that service? It seems to me that a commercial entity could provide it, if demand were high enough.
- uberman 4y agoSo more like renting
- moremetadata 4y ago[dead]
- MattGaiser 4y agoGiven how much home maintenance is done under the table, by handypeople who are not properly trained or insured, and/or by undocumented people with lower expectations on pay, I would be curious to know if this would actually be the case. The government would not accept any of those shortcuts and costs would likely be much higher.
- bwestergard 4y agoDoesn't public housing in most of Europe, and some of the United States, answer to this description?
- amichail 4y agoPublic housing allows low income people to rent at lower rates. I'm talking about something different: namely, owning your house but not having to worry about maintaining it.
- bwestergard 4y agoThat's the case in most of the United States, but in Europe there is plenty of government-maintained housing rented to people of all income levels.
- yuppie_scum 4y agoThey can’t even keep the roads paved and you trust them with your home?