
A better way to solve the housing crisis – tax land, not development - dredmorbius
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-manville-monkonnen-linkage-fee-20170719-story.html
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danjoc
When there are 6x more empty homes than homeless, I suspect the crisis is not
one of supply in this country.

A couple of points. The average home buyer stays in their home ~13 years as of
2013 and that number was trending lower,

[https://chicagoagentmagazine.com/2013/01/07/nahb-study-
avera...](https://chicagoagentmagazine.com/2013/01/07/nahb-study-average-
homeowner-to-stay-in-home-for-13-years/)

Now look at a 30 year amortization schedule

[https://www.basicfinancialtips.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/0...](https://www.basicfinancialtips.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/05/Mortgage-Amortization.gif)

Notice anything? Right, not even at 50% principal until around year 19.

Why is housing so expensive? Americans are giving all that money to the banks.
And after 13 years? They jump off the treadmill, go back to the start, and
throw more money away. And this is best case, assuming no second mortgages,
interest only loans, and all the other scams Americans are so gullible to fall
into.

~~~
dredmorbius
In some areas, homes are left empty.

In others, there is a much greater housing demand than supply.

In both cases, increasing the cost of leaving housing idle would seem to be an
improvement over the present situation.

It's occurred to me that the problem of housing and wages are twinned, and
that some sort of land-tax / land-reform, paired with an income regime
(employer of last resort, UBI, living wage, probably a mix of all of the
above) is necessary.

Without housing reform, increased wages are withdrawn via rents.

Without wage reform, housing supply remains beyond the effective demand of
those who are unhoused / insufficiently housed, and/or are subject to highly
variable income.

See:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6nxi42/rent_an...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6nxi42/rent_and_wages/)

