There's this widespread misconception among the public that the housing shortage is caused by like, a shortage of building materials, I think because the actual explanation that the thing is short supply is "permission to erect a building" is too stupid-sounding to feel like it could the real reason
There are millions of empty houses "owned" by private equity companies. Those companies should be burned to the ground and houses seized for those that need them.
no there aren't. almost all houses owned by private equity companies are rented out to people for money. almost all the "empty" ones are the ones being renovated or between tenants.
people really like the "homes kept deliberately empty" theory because its a "solution" to the housing crisis that doesn't require them to do anything or any tradeoffs but it's unfortunately not accurate.
Michael do you know that under Communism we will completely abolish the concept of trade-offs so that you will never have to make a Choice You Feel Bad About Ever Again
It's always funny when people just assert that communism will fix housing shortages when basically every communist country that actually existed has horrible housing shortages
I had someone stop by my mentions yesterday because I made the observation that CAPITALISM isn't a valid explanation of why housing policy in North America is busted, because you can look at, say, Japan, a CAPITALISM country if there ever were one, and not see the same distortions.
This is fair but I do think Japan may struggle with housing glut for a variety of other reasons they find undesirable. But I’ll admit it’s been a while since I’ve read up on that.
To be fair, that's the preferred solution from NIMBYs in my town. "Oh housing is too expensive here, why won't people just move to Kansas"
We're in Massachusetts
once spoke to a landlord (not mine but also in mass) complaining to me about the eviction moratorium and i asked where she thought ppl should move during a pandemic and she was just like “with their families.”
oh, cool then.
Or the related you don't need housing because you and your family can sleep on couches in your parents' apartment, which they are recreating by ignoring that problem of overcrowding.
It's almost like there are policy decisions and material conditions which affect people's living conditions, rather than perfect ideologies which work perfectly
There are a bunch of ideologies out there that really will let you substitute vibes and dogma for materialism and economic analysis but Marxism is not one of them! The whole project is about economic analysis!
And that's not even to say Marx's theories were entirely perfect either, it's just that *if* you want to take his theories seriously, as I do, you have to engage with materialism and economics! It's *the* thing!
there's probably some hybrid strategy of state housing + market-rate development that would fix this for good but we'll never know bc whoever's in charge needs their ideological victory to be total & absolute
This theory never describes how those vacant homes would be put into use for housing the homeless. Is the government going to pay market price for these millions of tax shelter luxury condos? Seize them by eminent domain? Politically this seems a lot more difficult than lifting zoning restrictions
A vacancy tax (like British Columbia has) would be a good place to start. Pay a high enough tax on homes that aren't being lived in, and suddenly selling or renting makes financial sense.
(The tax earnings are earmarked for building more affordable housing, IIRC. Double win!)
A vacancy tax is a good thing to have, but at least in Vancouver BC it's produced only a small faction of the housing units needed despite it being raised several times. We need to allow the construction of much more housing to meet people's needs.
Even if this conspiracy theory were true, building more housing would solve it and "punish" the people holding on to vacant property (by making it less valuable)
The paradox is also that high (inflated) housing prices are retirement nest eggs for a large portion of American. The bad guys are us! Mom and pops who bought a ranch house for $200K (inflation adjusted) that’s worth $3mm now after 25 years. That type of windfall isn’t free!
nice to see an independent recreation of @eean.dev's timeless banger
The socialism we need: Capitalism has failed to build badly needed housing
The socialism we have: Capitalism has built enough housing
Let’s take a look at if “homes” is houses and apartments or just houses, and see if there’s any kind of games being played in the technical definitions.
The cost isn't too high because of millions of homes being kept deliberately empty, the cost is too high because we are millions of housing units short of the amount we need for affordable housing to be broadly available.
most "vacancies" are short term (rentals between tenants), most long-term vacancies are in low demand markets or are units that require tens of thousands of dollars of renovations to be habitable. the "house kept deliberately empty" is mostly a myth
I think people really don’t understand the turnover contribution to vacancy rates. If a unit turns over every two years and it only takes a month to clean it up, conduct maintenance (good luck getting a contractor right now) and get a tenant in that is an almost a 5% vacancy rate right there!
A good example of this is that if you look at the two metro areas with the highest vacancy rates you'll see Fort Meyers/Cape Coral and then Sarasota—both of which were catastrophically flooded by Hurricane Ian two years ago.
