4 ms·

Lahaina Fire Victims Being Pressured to Sell Land

55 points by h2odragon 3y ago

bearjaws 3y ago
Why let people build homes when you can build them and rent them out for life? Why even let people live somewhere when you can AirBnB it for $9-12k a month. Capitalists gonna capitalize, end game will be everyone renting.
- local_issues 3y ago
  If we would let capitalists build instead of pretending that housing just appears magically, we’d have a better world. Investment funds state in filings that they buy properties in NIMBY areas because the local policies protect their investment.
  - dontreact 3y ago
    I’m a diehard YIMBY, but this isn’t really “not in my backyard” it’s more like: don’t prey on my (or my neighbor’s) emotionally and financially vulnerable state in order to buy my backyard (and also the rest of my house). So not NIMBY but DPOMEAFVSIOTBMBY
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Maybe; in Maui's case, there's already significant water shortages (https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-resorts-worsen-maui-water-problems-18210790.php https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-resorts-worsen-...). The folks snapping up property there are likely to be more NIMBY, not less. Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison aren't buying land in Hawaii to fill it with affordable housing.
    - pookha 3y ago
      I was just out there in July. There's an entire class of rich entitled a-hole that hate tourists in Hawaii and they're normally the exotically rich (often they're in the guise of a surfer). Had one yell at my daughter while she was waiting for the bathroom (I wasn't there). Those guys aren't capitalists, they're crony capitalists. They want local jurisdictions to keep the tourists out (kill the economy) so that they can buy up land and real-estate and convert the area to something like a British Virgin Islands tax haven. Zuckerberg is one of these guys. Many of the locals in Maui were saved by the tourist industry when their agriculture exports cratered. They made a seamless transition and there are thousands of locals that are able to live comfortably whereas others have struggled because of housing costs. But even the tourist industry is under attack now. I hope they're able to navigate this so that the greatest amount of people in that area are able to maintain their livelihoods and keep their way of life.
andsoitis 3y ago
>Gov. Josh Green reported that residents are being approached about selling fire-damaged home or land sites by people posing as real estate agents. > He said those people may have “ill intent” and issued a warning to scammers. > “You would be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people and then build here,” Green said in a press release Monday. How, exactly, is buying land from someone "stealing"? What is the "ill intent" that is being alluded to? > “Does this benefit Maui moving forward or does it gentrify it more and hurt the local population? I know Lahaina pretty well and, while it has lots of fabulous historical spots, it is (was) also a tourist trap with your typical Las Vegas style art, expensive clothing brands, etc.
- thinkindie 3y ago
  taking advantage of the emotional state of people that saw all their possessions in hashes is stealing, even if you went through legal processes.
- delfinom 3y ago
  There are a lot of negative sentiments in Hawaii because it was ultimately a island chain that was seized by force by the US and the natives never had any say. A lot of that negative sentiment is building and going to explode one day because those of native origin are continuing to be pushed out of housing by the weathly from the US buying everything up.
  - veave 3y ago
    Might is right. If they couldn't defend their land how can they say it's theirs?
  - balls187 3y ago
    > …was seized by force by the US and the natives never had any say. Just like the rest of the United States.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      Not really; this was more coup-y than usual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_King...
ceejayoz 3y ago
Might see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_auction_(foreclosure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_auction_(foreclosure) return if this keeps up.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Uhh, excuse me if I throw up a bit in my mouth about the quote from "Local developer Christopher Greene": > Local developer Christopher Greene said he’s concerned that the fires will push local residents out of their community. > "Does this benefit Maui moving forward or does it gentrify it more and hurt the local population? I think we know the answer. And so it’s really critical to rally as a community and also respect the Hawaiian people and their culture and kingdom." And here is the video of his they show: https://youtu.be/ujLzG8zR8uw https://youtu.be/ujLzG8zR8uw Meanwhile, this is his project, https://islandproject.com/ https://islandproject.com/ , which as far as I can tell seems to basically be "Luxury Maui Timeshares on the Blockchain", https://islandproject.com/about-us/ https://islandproject.com/about-us/. My personal opinion, but it seems to basically merge the scummiest parts of the scammiest industries I can think of: time shares, crypto ("Non-fungible parcels"), and televangelism. So to have this guy warn about how unscrupulous investors are taking advantage of the locals by gentrifying Maui??? Some people really need to invest in a mirror.
- Nifty3929 3y ago
  [flagged]
arprocter 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_to_power_and_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_t...
Nevermark 3y ago
Tangential to the discussion, but: Economist Henry George (1839-1897) proposed that taxing land, but not the property constructed on that land, better reflected the fact that land is a limited shared community resource. [0] This arrangement has both moral and economic efficiency benefits. Among them, is the rich 1% are less incentivized to use limited land as an investment vehicle (like gold, or today, Bitcoin), a practice that has runaway price increasing effects, resulting in more affordable land for 99%. So real estate investment bubbles are less likely, or likely to be less severe. Since constructing on land does not directly raise its taxes, there is a strong incentive to use it most productively (greater multi-housing development, etc.) Suppressing availability and productive use of land, by holding unused land as a financial hedge, or unused dwellings as a common step in money laundering, both become much less economically viable. And there are other benefits of aligning tax (a shared rent) against land (a shared resource), instead of taxing property (the result of individual effort & resources). —- How that would apply here: In Lahaina’s case, investors would be less incentivized to scoop up land since a land tax would not have dropped due to the disaster. No land was destroyed. Whereas currently, property taxes, where property was destroyed, will have fallen significantly, incentivizing investors to use the disaster to acquire as much of the limited land as they can. The more land investors take off the market, the higher the land prices will go, creating a self-reinforcing situation where regular people will be much less likely to ever be able to acquire land in the future. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George
- voisin 3y ago
  As sympathetic to Georgism as I have found myself to be, I still cannot understand why proponents view it as such a panacea. It amounts to shifting property taxes from the improvement on the land to the land itself and ensuring that the tax is high enough to push owners to make use of the land. So the rich, who can afford the ongoing tax rate and can afford to make use of the land by developing it, are the ones that benefit anyways and take it off the market in the same manner as current.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    You are missing a huge sector of the real estate market. Vast quantities of real estate are completely, or partially, valued as a store of value, due to its limited supply, and lower taxes for land owners who avoid developing the land vs. those that develop land (as development is taxed). Virtually every balanced portfolio includes real estate as a financial hedge. Given limited land for this (or any other use) this drives up land prices immensely. Billionaires own fortunes in unused plots, empty homes & apartments, and vast sparsely undeveloped land expanses, left completely or mostly unused. Because without property on it, land is currently taxed very lightly. This pervasive circular-demand created by the financial instrument role of land also magnifies real estates role in financial bubbles and crashes. Just as limited Bitcoins circular dynamics as a store of wealth encourage booms and busts: more demand => more value => more demand; and the reverse loop. What makes land different from other resources is that it is both limited (especially habitable land near important resources), and necessary for every individual’s survival (you have to be, and store your artifacts of life, somewhere). So demand for land doesn’t decrease when prices go up. As land prices go up, demand (in total dollars or other currency) goes up, not down. UNLESS this combination of limitation and necessity is balanced by the economically sensible view that land is a limited common inheritance (nobody created it) and taxed to compensate citizens jointly. AND development on land is not taxed, thus eliminating an effective double tax on the income that paid for the development (or equivalently, the income that pays off a development loan). Then then land taxes cancel out speculative returns. The rich adapt by using another financial store of value vehicle that isn’t a survival necessity (gold, silver, Bitcoin, …), and land gets BOTH cheaper AND more productively used.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

55 points by h2odragon 3y ago

Why let people build homes when you can build them and rent them out for life? Why even let people live somewhere when you can AirBnB it for $9-12k a month. Capitalists gonna capitalize, end game will be everyone renting.

local_issues 3y ago
If we would let capitalists build instead of pretending that housing just appears magically, we’d have a better world. Investment funds state in filings that they buy properties in NIMBY areas because the local policies protect their investment.
- dontreact 3y ago
  I’m a diehard YIMBY, but this isn’t really “not in my backyard” it’s more like: don’t prey on my (or my neighbor’s) emotionally and financially vulnerable state in order to buy my backyard (and also the rest of my house). So not NIMBY but DPOMEAFVSIOTBMBY
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Maybe; in Maui's case, there's already significant water shortages (https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-resorts-worsen-maui-water-problems-18210790.php https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-resorts-worsen-...). The folks snapping up property there are likely to be more NIMBY, not less. Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison aren't buying land in Hawaii to fill it with affordable housing.
  - pookha 3y ago
    I was just out there in July. There's an entire class of rich entitled a-hole that hate tourists in Hawaii and they're normally the exotically rich (often they're in the guise of a surfer). Had one yell at my daughter while she was waiting for the bathroom (I wasn't there). Those guys aren't capitalists, they're crony capitalists. They want local jurisdictions to keep the tourists out (kill the economy) so that they can buy up land and real-estate and convert the area to something like a British Virgin Islands tax haven. Zuckerberg is one of these guys. Many of the locals in Maui were saved by the tourist industry when their agriculture exports cratered. They made a seamless transition and there are thousands of locals that are able to live comfortably whereas others have struggled because of housing costs. But even the tourist industry is under attack now. I hope they're able to navigate this so that the greatest amount of people in that area are able to maintain their livelihoods and keep their way of life.

andsoitis 3y ago

>Gov. Josh Green reported that residents are being approached about selling fire-damaged home or land sites by people posing as real estate agents. > He said those people may have “ill intent” and issued a warning to scammers. > “You would be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people and then build here,” Green said in a press release Monday. How, exactly, is buying land from someone "stealing"? What is the "ill intent" that is being alluded to? > “Does this benefit Maui moving forward or does it gentrify it more and hurt the local population? I know Lahaina pretty well and, while it has lots of fabulous historical spots, it is (was) also a tourist trap with your typical Las Vegas style art, expensive clothing brands, etc.

thinkindie 3y ago
taking advantage of the emotional state of people that saw all their possessions in hashes is stealing, even if you went through legal processes.
delfinom 3y ago
There are a lot of negative sentiments in Hawaii because it was ultimately a island chain that was seized by force by the US and the natives never had any say. A lot of that negative sentiment is building and going to explode one day because those of native origin are continuing to be pushed out of housing by the weathly from the US buying everything up.
- veave 3y ago
  Might is right. If they couldn't defend their land how can they say it's theirs?
- balls187 3y ago
  > …was seized by force by the US and the natives never had any say. Just like the rest of the United States.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    Not really; this was more coup-y than usual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_King...

ceejayoz 3y ago

Might see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_auction_(foreclosure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_auction_(foreclosure) return if this keeps up.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Uhh, excuse me if I throw up a bit in my mouth about the quote from "Local developer Christopher Greene": > Local developer Christopher Greene said he’s concerned that the fires will push local residents out of their community. > "Does this benefit Maui moving forward or does it gentrify it more and hurt the local population? I think we know the answer. And so it’s really critical to rally as a community and also respect the Hawaiian people and their culture and kingdom." And here is the video of his they show: https://youtu.be/ujLzG8zR8uw https://youtu.be/ujLzG8zR8uw Meanwhile, this is his project, https://islandproject.com/ https://islandproject.com/ , which as far as I can tell seems to basically be "Luxury Maui Timeshares on the Blockchain", https://islandproject.com/about-us/ https://islandproject.com/about-us/. My personal opinion, but it seems to basically merge the scummiest parts of the scammiest industries I can think of: time shares, crypto ("Non-fungible parcels"), and televangelism. So to have this guy warn about how unscrupulous investors are taking advantage of the locals by gentrifying Maui??? Some people really need to invest in a mirror.

Nifty3929 3y ago
[flagged]

arprocter 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_to_power_and_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_t...

Nevermark 3y ago

Tangential to the discussion, but: Economist Henry George (1839-1897) proposed that taxing land, but not the property constructed on that land, better reflected the fact that land is a limited shared community resource. [0] This arrangement has both moral and economic efficiency benefits. Among them, is the rich 1% are less incentivized to use limited land as an investment vehicle (like gold, or today, Bitcoin), a practice that has runaway price increasing effects, resulting in more affordable land for 99%. So real estate investment bubbles are less likely, or likely to be less severe. Since constructing on land does not directly raise its taxes, there is a strong incentive to use it most productively (greater multi-housing development, etc.) Suppressing availability and productive use of land, by holding unused land as a financial hedge, or unused dwellings as a common step in money laundering, both become much less economically viable. And there are other benefits of aligning tax (a shared rent) against land (a shared resource), instead of taxing property (the result of individual effort & resources). —- How that would apply here: In Lahaina’s case, investors would be less incentivized to scoop up land since a land tax would not have dropped due to the disaster. No land was destroyed. Whereas currently, property taxes, where property was destroyed, will have fallen significantly, incentivizing investors to use the disaster to acquire as much of the limited land as they can. The more land investors take off the market, the higher the land prices will go, creating a self-reinforcing situation where regular people will be much less likely to ever be able to acquire land in the future. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George

voisin 3y ago
As sympathetic to Georgism as I have found myself to be, I still cannot understand why proponents view it as such a panacea. It amounts to shifting property taxes from the improvement on the land to the land itself and ensuring that the tax is high enough to push owners to make use of the land. So the rich, who can afford the ongoing tax rate and can afford to make use of the land by developing it, are the ones that benefit anyways and take it off the market in the same manner as current.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  You are missing a huge sector of the real estate market. Vast quantities of real estate are completely, or partially, valued as a store of value, due to its limited supply, and lower taxes for land owners who avoid developing the land vs. those that develop land (as development is taxed). Virtually every balanced portfolio includes real estate as a financial hedge. Given limited land for this (or any other use) this drives up land prices immensely. Billionaires own fortunes in unused plots, empty homes & apartments, and vast sparsely undeveloped land expanses, left completely or mostly unused. Because without property on it, land is currently taxed very lightly. This pervasive circular-demand created by the financial instrument role of land also magnifies real estates role in financial bubbles and crashes. Just as limited Bitcoins circular dynamics as a store of wealth encourage booms and busts: more demand => more value => more demand; and the reverse loop. What makes land different from other resources is that it is both limited (especially habitable land near important resources), and necessary for every individual’s survival (you have to be, and store your artifacts of life, somewhere). So demand for land doesn’t decrease when prices go up. As land prices go up, demand (in total dollars or other currency) goes up, not down. UNLESS this combination of limitation and necessity is balanced by the economically sensible view that land is a limited common inheritance (nobody created it) and taxed to compensate citizens jointly. AND development on land is not taxed, thus eliminating an effective double tax on the income that paid for the development (or equivalently, the income that pays off a development loan). Then then land taxes cancel out speculative returns. The rich adapt by using another financial store of value vehicle that isn’t a survival necessity (gold, silver, Bitcoin, …), and land gets BOTH cheaper AND more productively used.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]