4 ms·

I do think we still need to build more (correctly sized) housing, counteract urbanization, provide social housing, and I'm in favor of rent control in general.

I do think we still need to build more (correctly sized) housing, counteract urbanization, provide social housing, and I'm in favor of rent control in general. So don't get me wrong, I don't think progressive tax will solve the problem on its own. That being said: Higher taxes could lead to higher rents, but that stops working once the supply of people willing to pay said higher rent is exhausted. At some point landlords won't be able to rent out their place with a profit, at which point you have 2 options: Leave it empty (which should also be illegal, IMO) or sell it (to people who would otherwise have to rent). It could be that there is a potential never-ending supply of rich people wanting to pay rent to live in a place with ever-increasing rent and the gentrification that comes with it, but it seems unlikely to me. In the Netherlands there were recently a set of tax changes increasing taxes on house ownership, which caused companies to sell apartments en mass. Housing prices dipped for a little bit, rent (in the private market) went up, but more people own their own place now. This is the direction you want to go, I think.

wildrhythms 3y ago
All that and no mention of rent control...
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  If you have enough realestate, there's no need for rent control, because landlords will have to lower prices to get anyone to stay in their apartments, and empty apartments are still a huge cost to the owner. High costs of rent and (buying) houses is because there's not enough supply in the first place.
  - wildrhythms 3y ago
    That policy has been tried for 50 years and all we've seen (and the topic of this thread) is prices gone higher and higher, and properties become more and more consolidated under megacorporations.
    - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
      50 years ago, this place where I live was a socialist country and we built HUGE apartment building neighbourhoods (literally thousands of apartments) + all the infrastructure needed (schools, kindergardens, stores, parks,...). After 1991 all of this has stoped. I don't know where you are from, but when was the last time you guys built a new neighbourhood for 10, 20 thousand people to live in? Because i've been all over both always-capitalist and former-socialist countries (mostly europe), and most of them are old with just a few newer buildings, mostly replacing the demolished old ones. It really doesn't matter, slovenia (my home), or germany... you see a bunch of large apartment blocks built in the same style, for many many people to live in, and you just know it was built somewhere between 1960s and late 1980s, and not after.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        vienna is doing that right now: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern
        ajsnigrutin 3y ago
        I'm guessing the first time in 20, 30 years? :)
        em-bee 3y ago
        well, it appears there is another one that i didn't know about which started a few years earlier: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei but there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City from the 90s (though it has only 20% residential use) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa from the 70s in general vienna has a long history of large public housing projects going back a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau it should be noted that until the 1990s the population of vienna has actually been slowly declining (from 2 million more than 100 years ago to 1.5-1.6 million) and most projects before then were more likely needed because a lot was damaged in the world wars. but in the last few decades vienna has seen unprecedented growth, now reaching almost 2 million inhabitants again. consequently in the last 20 years several new building projects have been initiated. the ones i linked are just a few examples. i keep finding out about more as i search.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  Yes let's trap people in apartments they can never move from and force newcomers to pay excessive rents to cover it. Also let's give landlords an incentive to try to make it as unpleasant for those long term tenants as possible. And of course we will need an expensive and unaccountable bureaucracy to manage all the inevitable conflicts of interest. But it's a small price to pay to avoid the horror of building enough housing units to match population growth.
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
...or just build enough housing, that whoever wants to buy it, can buy it at some normal percentage above construction costs, and enough rental properties exist, that landlords have to lower the prices of rent to get someone to live there. If you're stuck at a "pay way too much for rent" or "commute for 3 hours every day" choice, and if you don't take the too expensive apartment, there are 10 other people interested in it, it's a pretty shitty situation to be in... and here in Ljubljana Slovenia this is happening just now (college starting soon, students looking for apartments). Leaving apartments empty is not worth it, since you still have to pay for monthly costs (power, water, heating, even if empty), and the only way to be worth it is, if the price of the apartment rises higher than the monthly costs.. and that is only true if (almost) no new apartments are being built. If we built enough new apartments the prices of used one would go down, making apartments a bad investments for speculators.

wildrhythms 3y ago

All that and no mention of rent control...

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
If you have enough realestate, there's no need for rent control, because landlords will have to lower prices to get anyone to stay in their apartments, and empty apartments are still a huge cost to the owner. High costs of rent and (buying) houses is because there's not enough supply in the first place.
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  That policy has been tried for 50 years and all we've seen (and the topic of this thread) is prices gone higher and higher, and properties become more and more consolidated under megacorporations.
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    50 years ago, this place where I live was a socialist country and we built HUGE apartment building neighbourhoods (literally thousands of apartments) + all the infrastructure needed (schools, kindergardens, stores, parks,...). After 1991 all of this has stoped. I don't know where you are from, but when was the last time you guys built a new neighbourhood for 10, 20 thousand people to live in? Because i've been all over both always-capitalist and former-socialist countries (mostly europe), and most of them are old with just a few newer buildings, mostly replacing the demolished old ones. It really doesn't matter, slovenia (my home), or germany... you see a bunch of large apartment blocks built in the same style, for many many people to live in, and you just know it was built somewhere between 1960s and late 1980s, and not after.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      vienna is doing that right now: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern
      - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
        I'm guessing the first time in 20, 30 years? :)
        em-bee 3y ago
        well, it appears there is another one that i didn't know about which started a few years earlier: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei but there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City from the 90s (though it has only 20% residential use) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa from the 70s in general vienna has a long history of large public housing projects going back a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau it should be noted that until the 1990s the population of vienna has actually been slowly declining (from 2 million more than 100 years ago to 1.5-1.6 million) and most projects before then were more likely needed because a lot was damaged in the world wars. but in the last few decades vienna has seen unprecedented growth, now reaching almost 2 million inhabitants again. consequently in the last 20 years several new building projects have been initiated. the ones i linked are just a few examples. i keep finding out about more as i search.
fallingknife 3y ago
Yes let's trap people in apartments they can never move from and force newcomers to pay excessive rents to cover it. Also let's give landlords an incentive to try to make it as unpleasant for those long term tenants as possible. And of course we will need an expensive and unaccountable bureaucracy to manage all the inevitable conflicts of interest. But it's a small price to pay to avoid the horror of building enough housing units to match population growth.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago

...or just build enough housing, that whoever wants to buy it, can buy it at some normal percentage above construction costs, and enough rental properties exist, that landlords have to lower the prices of rent to get someone to live there. If you're stuck at a "pay way too much for rent" or "commute for 3 hours every day" choice, and if you don't take the too expensive apartment, there are 10 other people interested in it, it's a pretty shitty situation to be in... and here in Ljubljana Slovenia this is happening just now (college starting soon, students looking for apartments). Leaving apartments empty is not worth it, since you still have to pay for monthly costs (power, water, heating, even if empty), and the only way to be worth it is, if the price of the apartment rises higher than the monthly costs.. and that is only true if (almost) no new apartments are being built. If we built enough new apartments the prices of used one would go down, making apartments a bad investments for speculators.