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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

It's never appealing to make a long time member of a community leave because they can no longer afford the land they've owned for years, because other people say "I want that"

I move to a cheap, small town. I embed myself in the community and help build it up over decades. And then, at the peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am forced out, because someone who has never been here says that they would like to live here.

You don't see a problem with this?

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> I move to a cheap, small town. I embed myself in the community and help build it up over decades. And then, at the peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am forced out, because someone who has never been here says that they would like to live here.

Why would you be forced out? Yes, taxes on the underlying land would increase because it is more valuable, but you would be able to move into a new property in the same community, as housing would increase in density. Now if you don't want to live in a denser community, that's fine, but you don't really have a right to prevent the densification.

It sounds to me like GP’s concern is that their LVT would go up (across the entire town) due to popularity and become unaffordable (forcing them out economically), rather than being concerned with increasing density.

So I would need to sell the 2 BR single family home I've lived in for 30 years, and move to some other part of town to live in a 1BR apartment, because someone from some other part of the country can pay more in tax for the property I've lived on?

And then, at the peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am forced out, because someone who has never been here says that they would like to live here.

This is exactly what is happening in parts of Utah. Planners accounted for natural growth and a standard rate of in-migration, but there has been a flood of people from out of state forcing out the locals who made these places what they are by living in them for decades.

I guess I'm confused; how is this not a description of the current system? How are LVTs supposed to make this kind of thing worse?

It may be in some areas, not in others - depending on how their tax system works. Prop 13(which has massive flaws and abuses) in CA is an example, as well as states which just generally have low property tax rates because they derive their revenue from other sources like income tax.

Most proposals in this direction (e.g. Glen Weyl's "Radical Markets", [1]) make reasonable exemptions for basic personal needs, so people don't get thrown out of their (modest) homes or lose their personal belongings unexpectedly. The point isn't to kick you out of your village, it's to make speculative investments in real estate unattractive.

[1] http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s11222.pdf

You've obviously never seen a Nextdoor thread about rent control.

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