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ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they're doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
Landlords provide serfdom, and they are needed because of the serfdom the worst offenders impose on society.
If you live in a house long enough you should begin to have a claim on it. Most landlords add zero value to it, they only harvest it.
There is a solution for landlords that we've known about for a long time.
And its doesn't involve the a massive, powerful state controlling where people can live.
Its a 100% tax on the value of land. It would stop the landowning class from unfairly stealing huge amounts of money from the poor in the form of rent. It could fund the government (allowing us to decrease taxes that hurt labor, like an income tax), or be redistributed as UBI.
Seriously, if you are at all interested in potential solutions to the housing crises and wealth inequality, please, please, google Land Value Tax and Georgism.
What does this mean? It sounds like paying rent to the government using different words. A better solution I see is limiting the amount and type of property an individual can own before taxes are raised significantly or more severe steps are taken.
Why not pay rent to the government? Without a profit incentive, the value of housing would go down and the money you're paying in rent to the government would go on to fund public services rather than private equity firms, bank executives and shareholders
Landlords would just raise rent and claim the taxes as an expense. If they couldn't claim it as expenses they'll just increase rent even more.
I live in a city where property values have increased by an order of magnitude over about 40 years.
Yes, we have a lot of speculators and wealthy landowners who need to be taxed out of existence.
But we also have a problem where seniors on fixed incomes who have owned their homes for 30 - 50 years cannot afford their property taxes because the land their homes are sitting on has exploded in value.
There is a solution to this: homestead exemption. A lot of states already implement implement this with their normal property tax. If a property is your primary residence, then the tax you pay on it cannot increase by more than x% a year. Some states also give preferential tax treatment to senior's primary residence. Their is no reason we couldn't implement these same breaks on a LVT.
So they wouldn't be able to afford their taxes with a LVT, but they can't afford their taxes under the current property tax regime (in which land value is also a factor). I don't see how this is an argument against LVT.
But, zooming out, is it beneficial to society to have empty-nesters, and elderly single people, living in 3- or 4-bedroom houses when there's a critical housing shortage for young families? Is it even good for them to live in a big house, when a nearby, smaller dwelling that's cheaper, and easier to clean and keep up? The problem in the United States is that those smaller dwelling units don't exist at all in most neighborhoods, and about the only option is to move to an "independent living" facility on the edge of town, away from family an neighbors, for $3,000 a month.
It could be a win-win: Elderly owners of high-value land could realize the cash value that's currently locked up in their houses, while the city could benefit by intensified development of that same land, increasing nearby land values even more. We need to change the zoning code to allow building that missing-middle housing in the same neighborhoods, but if we did that, a land-value tax would help incentivize its construction.
USA government is far too greedy and won't ever do it.
Especially if it helps old people or people living off of 'benefits'.
Say a renter starts doing good job and money wise for themselves. They invest their surplus in investment options like mutual funds and deposits and so on. Then their surplus is enough to invest into real estate. Should they not?
No. Housing is a human right, not a commodity. A renter going on to invest in real estate is being the crab in a bucket climbing over others then pulling back the ladder that capitalism wants them to be.
I don't understand how would a 100% land tax work? If you own a 300k house you'd have to pay 300k in taxes every year? So basically making housing unaffordable except for the ultra rich?
Also why would anyone build apartments if they weren't going to make a profit? What's the incentive? No one would do anything if they couldn't make money doing it.
If landlords are bad or too expensive why not move, another building another state another lower cost of living area? Agreed rents are super high but that's mostly in dense urban areas. You're paying a premium for location.
I'm really not seeing any honest answers here about how to fix this problem. Besides the government should provide everyone free housing? How would that work how would you decide who gets to live where? Who gets the apartment on the lake vs next to the airport/oil refinery?
Like I get it housing is expensive but I haven't seen anything here that would actually help fix that? Ironically more landlords and more apartments would probably help.
Why not just move? Yeah I'm gonna tell my childrens mother that I'm taking off. Just can't afford this shit anymore, sorry. Then get hit with the inevitable child support payments that will end you up in jail in no time anyway.
Just toss all that shit aside and move somewhere rural and shitty so you can afford it! (Oops, forgot to mention that pay is also significantly lower now so you still can't afford anything )
You would only pay tax on the unimproved value of land. You pay no tax on everything built on it. So an empty 1-acre lot next to an apartment building providing 100 homes on a 1-acre lot would both pay the same taxes.
So landlords would earn a profit but they wouldn't earn rent (in the neoclassical sense).
Its almost like anybody who wants exclusive access to land (for their housing or their business) has to pay society for the right to use it. And if a business (like an apartment) tried to pass on costs to customer (their renters) without providing more or better services, they are essentially just admitting their land got more valuable, so they would just pay more in land value tax (thereby providing more funding for UBI or public services)
Okay that kind of makes sense. There is a problem though, well three.
Imagine you live in a small town. Something happens (COVID for instance) and your town becomes popular and your land value goes up. Yesterday your house was worth 100k but now it's worth 500k+. Your saying those people should essentially be forced out of their homes? To be bought up by rich people?
Additionally this means only the super rich would be able to afford homes? This tax would essentially mean only the top 1% could have a home and basically give them a free for all on any land they want. Why would we want that?
Lastly if you increased land tax by that much landlords would have to increase rent prices to offset this? So even with a govt subsidy the renter is still the person paying this increase.
Honestly I'm intrigued by this idea but once you start thinking about how it would work it falls apart. There is probably some variation of this that could work. Maybe in cities they'll be an extratax if you don't build some sort of minimum housing? But this is already pretty similar to just basic property taxes.
How does this work for land for agricultural use? It’s going to increase the tax burden on producers and increase the cost of food unless I misunderstand how this works and how it’s different than property tax