Unused housing should be taxed mercilessly.

And single-family homes should have a 100% annual tax on them, unless they are owned by an individual human/family (none of this LLC bullshit) who own only 1 house. Make a 6-month exception for inherited houses just so they can be sold, but otherwise just tax the shit out of them.

Make hoarding housing a liability.

I don't like the idea of US government taking the property at below market value, since that would violate the takings clause of the Constitution.

What I would be in favor of is a real estate tax that increases if a property isn't permanently occupied. Something that would encourage people to either reduce rent or unload the property.

It should be a reasonably gradual increase so that landlords aren't penalized if they can't find a tenant in the first or second month the unit is vacant. However if it's been a year they should be approaching the point of owing more in taxes than the property is worth.

Then you can take it for back taxes.

It would also discourage air b2b type arrangements, unless you own and live in the property. No more buying a house so you can rent it out for exorbitant rates.

As a current landlord about to extend a lease at exactly the same terms for 3rd year in a row (and I fix everything within 24 hours) - I agree with this too.

It's ridiculous that my largest store of value is a speculation bubble and a piece of paper with my name on it

Ban corporations from owning residential properties. Houses shouldn't be held like stocks or cryptocurrency. Only allow individuals to own a maximum of two residential properties, which must be occupied by the owner at least 5 months out of the year or be surrendered to the government, to be sold to an individual who will live in the house.

The current federal government? This is about the United States Federal Government?

LOL, nope don't trust them.

They'll seize the houses of "smaller" landlords and give them to the 1% rich landlords, and their houses would be exempt from the regulations. Then they will raise the rent even more, and this time, they will actually have good lawyers, and the tenants will lose every time.

The government needs to be fixed before we can even attempt to fix other issues.

This government would seize housing, then deny access to people of color, LGBT people, people with disabilities (yes the ADA exist, but fascists ignore laws), probably anyone who ever voted registered as a democrat, and anyone else critical of the regime.

I am a former landlord and I approve of this message. We are back in the house we rented out for 22 years after we moved across the country to a better job, in a place we didn't care for. We kept our house here so we could come back. We rented it out for 22 years at 30% or even less than market rate ($1600 a month in 2022 for a 3 bed two bath house near LA and a 10 m walk from the train) and we endured crooked and incompetent property managers, failed appliances and tenants who didn't pay rent. One became a bank robber after we evicted them for not paying rent. They could have started robbing banks earlier I guess so they could at least pay the rent. Anyway, it worked out very well for us. We are back in our house where we like to live. People and companies who buy a bunch of houses and don't rent them out to give people places to live shouldn't be able to profit from doing that.

Just apply a 300% tax on empty property. Empty houses don't contribute to the local economy by using local businesses.

Based I think the same thing should be done to retail stores. If you can't get people to rent it. Force a sale of the building

Even if we build cheap apartments for the homeless and fully fund it with tax payer money it actually saves tax payer money and gets the homeless out of the already over stressed healthcare system.

Most homeless are in and out of the hospital for easily preventable diagnosis that is a direct result of living on the street. This would free up a bed in the ED, free up a bed in acute care if admitted, and free up urgent care and other EMT resources.

This has been studied for YEARS. We know the answer to directly solving this without even trying to fix the other systemic issues at play here.

However, having a homeless population is good for capitalism. It's an area where an employer can point to and say, "If you don't work for pennies on the dollar, you'll end up there."

Well they could fix it in 2 years by this logic

Hey, I just rented my property for exactly what the council rates and body corporate expenses are. A $160 pw home. Not even a mark up to cover repairs etc, because capital gain will more than cover that. I did it because I hate what is happening in housing currently, especially for young buyers. Now my new tenant wants to delay moving in for 3 weeks, and not pay any rent during that time. /sigh....what scum I am....

Housing the homeless is a good idea, but doing it in a random, hap-hazard way is dangerous.

Govt takes over a block of brownstones, and throws a bunch of random people off the street with abuse/violence/psychological issues in them as fast as possible for six months, it's a recipe for disaster.

You have to be careful about housing people as a government, you become (at least partially) responsible for their actions. Somebody starts cooking meth on an end unit and all of a sudden you have a fire that kills 30 people.

When the govt plans housing they can take flammability, safety, and location into consideration. If you're just buying up slums to rehab, most of that goes out the window.

Why pay 40% market value?

How about this instead. If we continue to have rent and landlords, let's make a market incentive to lower prices.

Tax empty housing at a rate proportional to the advertised rental rate. Example, if a landlord has an unused unit listed for 1500 a month, they pay an empty housing penalty of, let's arbitrarily say 20%. Now they have an incentive to fill the unit at a lower price. They can no longer just price-gouge with their competitors to drive up rates. What do we do with the money we receive from those penalties? We provide housing assistance. So now the top and the bottom of the market start to balance each other out. Here's the real cool thing about this system, you can tie that penalty rate to the number of housing-insecure or unhoused people in the population. Now we can have a self-regulating system that provides an incentive to push rental rates down, but also gives low-income renters more money to rent with.

Do you think you provide housing? Here's a list of common signs:

If someone stole all your tools, you'd kill them, and you don't think that's weird.

Unhealthy relationship with caffeine (bonus points for other substances too)

At least one fucked-up bone or joint

There's some Liquid Nails or silicone caulk stuck in your favorite work shirt

Your hearing isn't as good as it used to be

Regular porta-shitter use

If two or more of these fit your lifestyle, you may be a provider of housing.