A housing system that serves all but one group is not in a state of crisis; it is one based on structural inequality and economic exploitation.
While I agree that supply is only part of the problem, I find this article just vaguely blames capitalism without providing any real solutions.
Is it capitalism to blame or the lack of controls on who can own how many rental properties?
I agree, some proposed solutions would be good, but it’s also an excerpt from a longer work that could include some.
Isn’t capitalism the cause of the lack of controls though? People with money lobbying the government to do things in their favour, and government officials with financial stake in making sure nothing changes?
I feel like the smart and humanitarian thing to do would be to make it so that whenever homelessness is above a preset inescapable amount such as 2%, or when there are more renters than homeowners, that it should be heavily fined and taxed for corporations and businesses to own more than a single home dwelling for rent purposes.
I for one favor a progressive tax on corporate ownership of single family dwellings (1-4 family residences) where the penalty for owning these dwellings is equal to an increase in tax at the federal level at 100% * the number of dwellings owned by the business.
So when you have companies that own a thousand homes they would have to pay a thousand times the annual property taxes on each of those homes in order to keep them.
Of course, you don’t just dump this on the market. You passed the rule, give them 2 years to prepare themselves and then roll out the taxes at an increase of 10% * the number of houses per year until they are at the 100% mark.
That would cause all of these businesses to liquidate the homes back into the market and allow prices to come down gradually so that individuals could own and purchase the homes while also generating a significant amount of tax revenue.
That in my opinion would be the easiest and most surefire way to solve the homelessness crisis without exploding the real estate market or causing any kind of major recession.
Sure, this would mean that there would suddenly spring into existence thousands upon thousands of businesses whose sole purpose and property is a single family home dwelling for rent purposes, but as a side effect of that, every home for rent would generate additional revenue for the government and would be an administrative nightmare for the business owners who own these homes. If you also tack in that this law affects conglomerates or companies and industries who commingle their finances, then that makes it incredibly difficult and technically illegal for businesses to do this kind of business.
Long story short, there should not be an industry in a developed world who profits off of ensuring that average citizens are never able to acquire property equity in their lifetimes.
Apartments are great for people who are starting out. Those should still exist because there are more hassles and then just maintaining a single property, and many people prefer living in apartments over houses because they don’t have to be responsible for the roof and the water heater and whatnot.
It’s a lack of controls on capitalism itself. Absolute capitalism works just as poorly as absolute socialism. As with everything in life, the best way to operate is by balancing extremes against each other.
It’s a failure of neoliberalism as an ideology.
I remember reading that city taxes should change from being based on the value of the building to only be based on the value of the land. This way it discourages only single-family homes.
Restrictive zoning already does more than enough to ensure single-family zoning.
The principle of “I want to make money” already discourages SFH. Unfortunately, that’s offset by zoning laws that inhibit the ability to make money.
Cities should already want less single family homes. They get more taxes from 120 apartment owners than they do from 12 SFH owners.
Just make rentseeking illegal already…
