The solution to the housing crisis is extremely simple

I rent because I have no specialization in identifying property value, and I don't like gambling. I feel no regret in letting my landlord take on the additional risk of managing the property for a chance at higher returns.

I don't want to maintain a home or a yard, presently. Renting out apartments is perfectly moral and ethical when there are people like me around (that is, I have a choice and have chosen to rent over own). The risk is more of the "slum lord" sort, taking advantage of people without the choice due to whatever circumstances. It's a risk of immoral or unethical behavior, but it's not guaranteed. My landlords (the company and their local staff) are quick to do repairs, have reasonable rates for rent, and have done a good job in maintaining the building (vermin free, which is a feat for an old warehouse). They guarantee protection of the commons (the building's infrastructure, safety, etc.) that would be nearly impossible to coordinate amongst the 80 or so units (about 120-150 people).

Why would anyone buy property under this regime?

Your article did not make this clear at all.

China is full of empty properties due to rampant speculation and a brand new financial-capitalist system (larger that the US banking system) that financed it.

Why everyone needs to be able to afford the housing? Down here in Europe we have about 30% homeownership rate and nobody says we are in a crisis, in fact, we are doing very well. U.S. is again near top of the world in homeownership rate.

You are making things up - trying to see a problem where there isn't. Better think about fixing childcare, and healthcare - that's where the real crisis is.

Income from idle land is certainly unearned. But little idle land can earn anything (grazing land, I suppose, but then you still may have some maintenance or security you provide). Anything else will be earning income not from the land, but things built on the land, grown on the land, etc. A house that I have built (or maintain) isn't land, it's a house. It requires land to sit on. So when I rent it out, what percentage of that income is because of the land and what percentage is from the house? If it's farmland, what percentage of the income is because of the labor and materials put into the land?

Taxes on land certainly make sense, but as written this essay's suggestion is to have a 100% tax on landholders income from land. So how, then, do they make money? Does this only apply to people who rent land but have done nothing to improve it? If I have a family farm that I want to hold onto, but rent out 100 acres to a lumber company does that mean I can't earn anything from that rent because I'm not the one doing the work? This essay needs some work to produce anything approaching a reasonable solution.

Isn't saying that it isn't terrible an opinion of itself? Also pointing out that hsitorically people thought certain something isn't enough on its own to show that it is the least bit reasonable in the modern era.

> It's not a horrible idea.

It is, for a wide array of reasons. Assessment for ad valorem, as-is, taxation of land is highly contentious as it is, but there is at least some coherent basis for such assessment since there are usually reasonably comparable referents involved in actual marker trade on which to base an assessment.

LVT inherently relies on assessment of the unimproved value of improved lots, which means you need to assess something for which there will rarely be comparable examples in trade. That's a practical concern.

There's a deeper theoretical concern that the fundamental basis of LVT (that land in the conventional sense represents the ultimate source of all extractions from the commons, such that an LVT represents a generalized tax on the use of the commons) is fundamentally flawed. While land holding can be viewed as a kind of use of the commons which should be taxed, wealth more generally itself (and moreso the farther that wealth is beyond that which one could personally supervise with one's inherent bodily facilities) represents such a use in any system with public enforcement of property rights, as do resource extraction and pollution generation.

> It's an old idea that's been popular with various economists including (gasp) Adam Smith

Adam Smith also thought that the landholding class was inherently the only class that could be trusted with government, since the business-owning class (Smith wrote early enough in the feudalism-capitalism transition that the fact that the latter class would subsume the former was not obvious to him) would favor interests that were distinct from the common interest, while the working class, which like the land-holding class would have interests aligned with the common interest -- would inherently be too ill-informed to understand or politically pursue their own interest.

Smith is an important and often insightful figure in the history of political economy, but, especially when it comes to the relationship of land-holding to capitalist and post-capitalist economies, not exactly a source where "he thought X was a good idea" is a particularly strong endorsement.

I don't think OP's proposal is to tax the income from the land, but the land itself. The whole idea is to prevent people from just sitting on un-utilized land.

Competition will not resolve the issue of taxes being passed on, because all properties will have an increased tax burden.

The smallest tax/rent increase will go to those using the land relatively optimally (to be decided by tax surveyors).

But the article's proposal is summed up here:

  Income from land is thus completely unearned and thus any
  income gained from land ownership should be completely taxed
  at 100%.

Taxing income from land, not land itself, based on some formula to determine it's value. This wouldn't cause unutilized land to be used, because it would have no taxes (other than base property taxes), but renting it out, for instance, would net you nothing. And if you can't sell it for a decent amount, or utilize it yourself (which the essay isn't clear, would income from a farm also be taxed?) you might as well leave it empty until the property taxes (if you kept them in this scheme) became overwhelming.

Assessments made by estimating the value based on actual sales data from similar properties. But the value of those real sales are made based on the expected profitability of the land.

It may be easier to see in rural areas. As a farmer, the price of farmland in the current climate seems to move to where the net profit on the productive use of that land is expected to be ~2-3% of the land's current value. So, as a rule of thumb, if you can expect to make $20-30,000 per year off 100 acres, then that 100 acres will sell for ~$1M.

If the tax on profits is 100%, the expected income will always be zero. Thus, the land is worth nothing. It doesn't really matter if it is in the heart of a city, or out in the middle of nowhere.