The Housing Crisis Isn’t Going Anywhere Until We Tackle Property Wealth Inequality
The Housing Crisis Isn’t Going Anywhere Until We Tackle Property Wealth Inequality
The housing crisis will never end without levying forceful taxes against real estate speculators and investors. A recent report outlines the necessary actions to impose taxes that can actually narrow the wealth gap and alleviate the housing emergency.
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I think the most novel proposal we put forward in the report is taxing the total real estate holdings of large landowners, as opposed to individually taxing each property using the aforementioned brackets. This could entail situations where large landowners own a portfolio of properties, each falling below that $3 million threshold, but that cumulatively add up to tens of millions of dollars. In this scenario, by taxing the total holdings instead of each property separately, these owners would no longer be able to avoid paying those progressive property tax rates.
There's a few interesting bits to this article, but I like this one the most. Property taxes on the cumulative amount of property a person or company owns is huge. It provides a punishment for buying up large amounts of property.
People already pay taxes on cumulative properties. You need this plus the progressive tax idea.
I'm 100% on board with this. Hell, why not both?
We could also do a residence + 1 option where your house and 1 other property are taxed reasonably. The any property beyond that is taxed as escalating rates that ramp up significantly for each additional property.
Because the corporations will never allow it
How, exactly, does a human population become so meek that they are willing to let a piece of paper control them?
I think the concern is that:
- The rich would try to skirt this with numbered or shell companies, or family or other relations.
- The rich would pass this onto tenants.
Now, the solution is to a) couple this with rent control, b) exempt purpose-built rentals from this endeavour, and c) punish serial transgressions with confiscation.
Frankly, I think the idea of punishing malfeasance by landlords with confiscation to be just awesome: if you're a predatory slumlord, we take the house and repurpose it as RGI public housing. Do I worry about the government becoming predatory? Yes, yes I do, but in this case it's a lesser-of-two-evils thin.
Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own residential property in the first place. Make it illegal.
Housing cooperatives are non-profit corporations that own property so that they can provide residential services to the members and owners of that corporation.
You know, I'm actually not 100% sure what the difference between a condominium and a cooperative is, but condos are also corporations.
I agree but then one of two things has to happen.
- No one is allowed to own property
- Corporations need to stop being classified as people
Guess which one would come first? Be honest.
There are already strong cases to be made that corporations aren't people, especially if you look into how flimsy that argument was in the first place, but I take your point.
Slumlords and overpriced rentals can be storage issues though. It can be a nice place, but if you're paying $2k+/mo for a 1b1b that's way too fucking much even if it's in good condition