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submitted 1 year ago by lumberjacked@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

We’re also seeing a rapid increase in commercial vacancies with WFH. But there are big challenges and costs to turning commercial properties into residential.

I’ve heard a lot about the problems. Surely there’s some good ideas for a solution out there?

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[-] ZapBeebz@beehaw.org 23 points 1 year ago

I mean, one good long term solution is either ban or heavily, heavily tax corporate ownership of single family homes. And heavily tax short term vacation rentals. Basically force all the companies that are buying up blocks and blocks of single family housing to sell.

Then, take a look at zoning laws. I have no experience with this side, but they're probably often a barrier to creating medium or high density housing. Which we're gonna need a lot of in the near future.

Apparently foreign home ownership is a big issue in Canada, so I have to assume it's also a (smaller) issue in the US.

Basically, the issue I see is not that there isn't enough housing. It's that corporate greed is pricing people out of their neighborhoods and then the houses are sitting empty because they're barely worth $150k, but the "market" says they can be listed at $400k, and not many people can afford that.

[-] imbrucy@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago

With inflation causing rents to go through the roof, houses being bought to be rented is just going to increase even more. I've had several houses in my neighborhood sold in the last few months be bought and immediately have "Available for Lease" signs put out.

We need to have something done to de-incentivize the idea of real estate as an investment and treat it like the necessity it is.

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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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