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To recruit teachers, school districts are building homes
- ReactiveJelly 2mo agoA land value tax would fix this
- trashcan 2mo agoHow?
- OutOfHere 2mo agoIt would allow housing to be substantially denser.
- dragonwriter 2mo agoHow would an LVT do that when the barrier to dense housing is zoning restrictions? Changing the tax structure doesn't remove that restriction.
- tptacek 2mo agoAn LVT addresses the incentives underling zoning. The LVT imagined by Georgists would very probably result in radically altered zoning rules. Zoning, after all, exists primarily to prop up the finances of homeowners.
- dragonwriter 2mo agoA Georgist LVT is based on the value of the bare land, which is constrained by permitted uses. Adopting it without first removing zoning restrictions would increase the incentive for homeowners to defend the existing zoning rules, since the removal of the rules would increase the scope of alternative uses of the land in ways which would make it economically impossible for most existing single family homeowners to afford the taxes on the property. On the other hand, once you remove the zoning restrictions, the existing economic incentives will produce densification without LVT, tbat's the whole thing the zoning restrictions exist to stop.
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- tptacek 2mo agoI mean, I agree with you about zoning; we're fourth and inches from eliminating SFZ in my muni, and an LVT isn't going to happen anywhere, so the rest of the debate is kind of academic.
- ahazred8ta 2mo agoAn LVT results in new McMansions getting built on quarter acre lots and being taxed at the same rate as SFHs and trailers on quarter acre lots. It's the perfect way to allow rich people to buy out poor people and pay the same tax as poor people. Welcome to unintended consequences. Institute an LVT if you want, but don't expect low cost housing to spring up.
- OutOfHere 2mo ago> trailers on quarter acre lots That is an irrelevant counterargument, since the idea of dense housing leans towards tall apartment buildings, not trailers. No one should have to live in a trailer.
- ahazred8ta 2mo agoThe idea of what should happen is irrelevant, because we have not seen this "dense housing" actually materialize in US LVT jurisdictions any time in the past 100 years. The township of the Fairhope Single-Tax Corporation near Mobile, Alabama was originally conceived as an artist's colony but is now occupied by families with a median income of $95K. Density is almost exactly 1 housing unit per residential acre. The feds have built 140 Section 8 subsidized units, but there do not seem to be any privately built high density tall apartment buildings of the type you want to see. Can you point to an LVT place in the US where developers have chosen to build large numbers of actual NON-LUXURY high rise apartment buildings for the benefit of non-rich people? That would be a big newsworthy success story if it actually happened. There are developers that make their money building high rise apartment blocks. Are any of them lobbying for an LVT so they can build more low cost housing?
- OutOfHere 2mo ago> but there do not seem to be any privately built high density tall apartment buildings of the type you want to see. There exist plenty of old buildings in urban centers that meet this criteria. There is nothing in principle that is stopping their construction. It's in the same imaginary league as LVT for that matter, meaning that if one can manifest, so can the other. Luxury buildings are made because of a profit motivation. Even so, once the supply is increased by 10x or 20x, their prices too will come down. China is a supreme example of having cheap apartments.
- lokar 2mo agoNot on its own. You also need to relax or remove direct (and indirect, eg parking minimums) restrictions on residential density.
- dragonwriter 2mo agoA land value tax without changes in non-tax land use regulations would not fix, and a land value tax would not be necessary after removing the non-tax land use restrictions which this responds to.
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- tptacek 2mo agoI know the Georgism joke here, but we don't need an LVT to fix this; we just need states to override home rule on minimum density requirements for residential and mixed-use zoning. The core problem here is in fact very simple!
- anon291 2mo agoExactly. I have a plot of land in inner Portland and they won't let me build on it. I mean they will, but not at the density needed to satiate demand such that home prices fall to the proper amount a home should cost. Should be a simple proposition with someone trying to spend his own money to build housing but it's not because they make it as hard as possible.
- AvAn12 2mo agoCould just, you know, pay more…
- dpbriggs 2mo agoWhy not make housing cost less instead?
- OutOfHere 2mo agoThey're not mutually exclusive goals. Wanting a more affording salary and scalable housing both are valid goals.
- lumost 2mo agoGovernments may be uniquely positioned to offer housing incentives as they often own the land, and control the zoning.
- ninjalanternshk 2mo agoBecause we’ve been sold the story that your house has to appreciate in value 2-3 times over the period you live in it, consequently, homeowners vote against anything that lowers housing costs.
- anon291 2mo agoExcept it's not much of a lie. The actual return on housing is basically not much higher than inflation
- fearmerchant 2mo agoThe only way that works is to build more housing. Austin has shown the way.
- smallerize 2mo agoYou could also cut back on the number of people who own multiple properties.
- andyferris 2mo agoWe are very fortunate that my wife got to work at the local school. She now walks to work and I work from home about 4 days out of 5 workdays. The benefits are huge in terms of time available and costs, and not needing childcare before or after school. It’s hard to solve couples having two jobs in different places, but having at least one person get to work basically instantly and for zero cost is a massive boon to society. The issue I saw is that the government department in charge of education is not the one in charge of housing and infrastructure, and there are no incentives to hire locally or make it easier to move locally. Instead you get teachers in suburb A travelling to suburb B and vice-versa, and no way that they can choose to swap roles. We lucked out.
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- wewewedxfgdf 2mo agoThe core fabric of society - the deal that was offered by society to the people - to work in a job, own a house, raise a family, have a retirement - has decayed away entirely for many people.
- crooked-v 2mo agoThe housing part never 'decayed', it was actively blocked by the people who already had homes. That's why you see things now like California actively overriding local zoning.
- cucumber3732842 2mo ago>, it was actively blocked by the people who already had homes. You're not wrong but this is too simplistic and avoids holding up a mirror that really ought to be held up. Zoning was the "we're gonna regulate our way into utopia" of their time. The class of useful idiots who made it happen and the class of useful idiots who will go to bat for it's continuance because they make a buck on it is far broader than that.
- tptacek 2mo agoIt's not simplistic. It is literally the core problem with housing. Zoning had a first objective of preventing Black families from moving into white neighborhoods, and then, in the 1980s, assumed a new role of driving scarcity (and thus the price of houses in areas of opportunity, to the benefit of existing homeowners).
- cucumber3732842 2mo agoYou're missing the point. If the states come along and override it and say houses can go anywhere they'll find another thing to use. They'll block the ancillary services (food and basic commerce) or they'll block the jobs. If not via zoning the same useful idiots will find some other avenue by which to micro manage. Environment is a common one, but not the only one. Once again, the race thing is a distraction because it lets the useful idiots who are peddling stuff that's just as short sighted claim that it'll work out simply because they're not peddling racist policies this time. Nobody has the balls to put their foot down and say that your neighbors have the right to build stuff you don't like and you can move if you don't like it.
- morkalork 2mo agoIt used to be like this in rural communities even up into the 70s and 80s. The town's branch manager would be young, shipped out for a few years and live in a house the bank owned and given a stipend to maintain it. Same with the postmaster and other professions.
- apparent 2mo agoTeacher recruiting wouldn't be so hard if pay weren't lockstep, as it is in so many places. Unions demand this, and it keeps some potentially-effective teachers out of the profession (and keeps old lousy ones in, unfortunately).
- analog31 2mo agoMaybe we could use college teaching as a model. College teachers are for the most part non-unionized. Disclosure: I was one of those teachers for a semester, many years ago. Also, teacher pay is not as rigid as it seems. In my state, the good teachers advance by moving to better paying districts. Very few teachers stay in rural districts for more than a year or two.
- apparent 2mo agoI thought the same thing regarding professors not being unionized. However, in top universities they are paid as much based on research (or outside offers based on research) as they are on teaching capability. One thing that is truly bonkers about K12 education is that they can get tenure in just a few years. This is much faster (and easier) than a professor getting tenure. But they both result in the near-inability to be fired.
- analog31 2mo agoThe majority of teaching is done by "adjuncts" who are not professors, are ineligible for tenure, and don't do research. They have to re-apply for their job every semester. People rarely do it long-term, though it sometimes employs academic spouses and people who are using it for health benefits while pursuing a side business. It's certainly not a career. My mom was a public high school teacher. When I described the conditions of working as an adjunct, her knee jerk reaction was: "That's why teachers have a union."
- Auracle 2mo agoThat’s funny, at least in my neck of the woods a lot of teachers prefer the rural jobs. I’m not sure if the pay increase of moving the city balances out anyways with the increase in housing costs.
- Balgair 2mo agoMy SO was a teacher before moving on and would see offers like this all the time. A few of the rural school districts here offer this incentive to move out there. Sometimes they include a car too. Note they tdo not do repairs though. The issue with taking one of these rural offers is that it's a dead end. Your schoolhouse of many grands gets smaller and smaller over time until they don't need you anymore. And then what? Your career as a teacher is essentially useless for any larger district as they do not care at all about teaching multiple grades at once and barely (or not) making state standards. And then you don't even have a house left over to sell (likely for a loss), it's the district's. I know it's the reverse of the article, but the incentives are the same and they don't make sense for any of the parties.
- jnyst1985 2mo agoWho eats the loss if home values fall before the resale restriction lifts?