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I think many of these ideas are sound but IMO your hostility towards “landlords” is misplaced. This isn’t the right forum to get into all the nuance, but the fact is we have an extremely non-competitive “landlord” and “developer” market, and almost all the perversions that we deal with originate in how much corruption, graft, ring-kissing, and (consequently) capital it takes to build anything.

The main issue I disagree with you on: rent control has been shown repeatedly to help existing renters at the expense of all future renters, which increases income inequality, in the long run is a wealth transfer from the young to the old, and lastly disincentivizes property maintenance leading to substandard living conditions. It also decreases economic mobility and incentivizes people who get rent control to do things like not have kids even though they would like to have kids, because they have an amazing deal on a 1bd apartment and needing more space would basically force them to start life over in a far off place.

If we had a robust free market for housing, like we do for cars, there would be lots of cheap “used housing” available and landlords would not have pricing power, they would have to make an effort to be a good landlord to have a tenant. You can see this with hotels (in areas where they aren’t over-restricted), where poorly run hotels are driven out of business by well-run hotels, including plenty of low cost hotels.

> I think many of these ideas are sound but IMO your hostility towards “landlords” is misplaced.

I see landlords like ticket scalpers -- they have the money up front to buy a product, and provide 'liquidity' and 'free markets' by selling that product at the market rate.

For some reason, we generally view ticket scalpers as negative, and landlords as "just what you do when you get wealthy enough".

And, to be clear, I have been a landlord. I know the challenges in maintaining a unit, finding tenants, chasing down rent, dealing with legal challenges, wondering if I would need to evict someone because they were destructive/loud/etc.

(Ultimately, I paid back all the rent I had collected that contributed to my principals on the unit, keeping only the money I used to pay for maintenance. My feelings about landlords come partially from being a landlord and realizing that I was profiting off of people only because I was rich enough to afford a house in the first place.)

That’s an extreme take, don’t you think?

We have issues with housing availability and we have issues with wealth concentration but renting a property to tenants is often a service to to people. And services are generally provided for money.

I’ve owned homes and I’ve rented homes. Owning can be burdensome in many ways: geographic and capacity friction, unpredictable capital risk, etc. Whether or not I have wealth, I may prefer to rent than by for valid reasons. It’s okay (and good) when someone in my community can provide the service of selling me shelter that suits my current needs for a reliable price. I’m willing to lay some premium for that.

Now, I don’t know what your relationship with your tenants were and if you have other reasons to feel like you were being exploitative, but please don’t toss out the valuable market role of landlords because there are some (and perhaps increasingly too many) that might be playing an unfair game. And certainly think carefully before you include yourself among them! You seem like a thoughtful and well-intentioned person — landlords like you are the kind that do good for communities!

I appreciate you expanding your thoughts. You are certainly free to feel how you feel, but I want to offer you one different angle:

For the sake of my career, I have moved a lot, six times as an adult. The first time I moved, I was able to buy a house in a cheap city. When I needed to move again it was a nightmare, the market was down, and it was very difficult for me to get that financial obligation off my back. Subsequently I have rented. I am very grateful that there are landlords who have housing units available for people who have reasons not to buy, and I have the opportunity to live in a place temporarily.

This is a complicated topic, and I fully acknowledge that there are bad landlords out there. But I do believe there is such a thing as a good landlord, providing a valuable service. I also believe that if we had a much more abundant housing supply, it would be much harder to make any money without being a very good landlord, and that would drive prices down, as well as driving the grifters out.

Just food for thought.

I think there are fundamental differences between landlords and ticket scalpers that must be taken into account despite the similarities in other ways.

In addition to the obvious duties of maintenance, landlords Supply the capital for the house a tenant occupies. In this way they are more similar a company providing a car lease, fixed duration business loan, or home mortgage. They generally do so with fewer financial protections in my opinion.

A tennant pays a monthly fee instead of a large Capital investment and debt obligation. The landlord takes on substantial costs ( opportunity and real) as well as substantial risks when renting, which warrant some profit margin at a debatable rate.

> rent control has been shown repeatedly to help existing renters at the expense of all future renters, which increases income inequality

I'd love a link to some sources showing this.

Basically any paper on rent control. Here's one on berlin's implementation. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4047633 People who were already there get a deal, everyone else pays much more.

Are all forms of rent control like this? Including rent stabilization or whatever else they're called? Because my impression was that at least some forms of it keep the rent low even if the tenant changes, in exchange for lower taxes or such.

The issue is that rent control leads to supply shortages since it disincentivizes building new units so you end up with a waitlist to get an apartment. Similar issue that prop 13 creates. No one moves because it is either impossible, or would require paying much more.

Thanks but I feel like that didn't answer my question? I was asking if all forms of rent control allow increases when a tenant moves out, which seemed to be the claim and the reason cited in the comment.

As I was trying to say the end result is the same. If the law allows rents to increase when people move then no one will ever move since it will cost them money. If the law doesn't allow rents to increase when people move then no one will move because there will be a shortage and whenever a unit does open it will go to landlords family member or friend.

9) Vacancy taxes: Also high taxes and oversight on properties used as rentals.

In specific, a home lived in by the owner for at least 35% of a tax year (or unlivable due to disasters/etc) should be taxed at a low rate, while any OTHER home should be taxed at a much higher rate and inspected as a rental unit, including being kept ahead of minimum rental code (which would be a more stringent baseline than minimum code).

13) new builds expressly purchasable only by first time home buyers

Sounds reasonable to me. I'd maybe use a slightly different designation for primary residence (e.g. you can choose one residence to be your primary residence, which you must occupy for 35% of the year).

And I'm sure #13 would run into legal hot water, but heck, if it gets people housed, I'd give it a shot.

Why 35% and not 55%?

This allows for 'winter' / 'summer' homes (snowbirds) as well as moving, but is SLIGHTLY larger than 1/3rd which makes it impossible to have more than two homes, while allowing the maximum chronological allowance for moving and the minimum requirement for using such a vacation home or log cabin etc.

This is selected to minimize friction from those who vote but don't actually use their properties as rentals.

>3) Rent control

hard disagree. it basically ends up being a transfer of wealth from new residents (who have to pay higher rents) to older residents (who have locked in lower rents).

>5) Affordable foreclosure insurance

What exactly is insured here?

>12) Right of first refusal laws (tenant opportunity to purchase)

What problem is this intended to solve? If someone is renting, how likely is he going to be able to pony up cash to buy the house that's about to be sold?

Good questions! I'll answer in reverse order --

Typically RoFR laws do require tenants to seek financial support from a lender or developer. The tenants front some of the capital, get a loan for some of the capital, and offer some incentive for a developer. This is typically for people whose multi-unit apartment building is being sold, where there's the possibility for the tenants to band together to create a co-op.

These programs are also sometimes eligible for government assistance -- essentially helping subsidize communities into owning their own housing.

> What exactly is insured here?

Typically the lender is protected at the owner's expense. Rates can be quite high, and increase the cost of living, pricing people out of housing.

> Rent control

You disagree that rent control reduces the power of landlords? Do you think it has a positive effect or no effect for the power of landlords?

> 8) Cooperative ownership of apartment buildings

Functionally, how are these different from condo buildings? Is it about whether the owner is also definitely a resident?

A co-op ownership of a building typically is not seeking to profit from the tenants in the building. They may charge fees to cover the maintenance and upkeep of the building and sustain their administration. Some condos operate similarly -- everyone buying a condo, with minimal fees paid to the developer to cover the maintenance of the building, with the developer making the bulk of their income from the sale of the units.

I'm not sure that's true. I'm a big proponent of co-ops, for housing and other endeavors, but co-ops can seek to make a profit. Not in the sense of a return to investors or owners, but they may have other objectives in mind. The co-op owned apartment building May seek to purchase an additional building for example, and charge tenants more than the cost of maintenance.

For sure. Hence "typically". In the usual case, the coop is designed to be operated by the tenants, who are not operating it as a profit seeking venture and it's run democratically. It's not impossible that what you say is also true -- I'm sure there are housing coops that are run as you describe.

I guess I'm debating which is more typical.

Most coops I know are part of a system with aspirations to expand.

They are not that different. Some (all?) Canada provinces and definitely NYC have both types.

Social housing, specifically distributed low rise, well maintained

Why "low rise"? High rise is more efficient. High rise has a bad reputation but all the reputation stuff has been pretty coordinated by those who don't want public housing at all. And sure, well maintained.

I'm in favor of rent control but with enough dense housing, rent control won't be fighting supply and demand.

The reason I prefer low rise (especially in the 3-6 floors range) is because they require less specialized service. Maintaining the systems for a 40 story building requires specialists in hvac, elevators, plumbing, fire suppression, window washing, painting, siding, etc. that are simply less available than the folks who know how to get up on a ladder and just fix it.

Low rise also decentralizes services needed to support social housing, and allows local communities to build relationships that are less adversarial with the housing. (Which, imo, might be a uniquely American view that social housing is for the poor only.) So, in the initial rollouts, I think it makes it appear more palatable to American communities.

Now, I agree, high rise is more efficient across other axes. And I'd take well maintained high rise social housing over the current status quo. I have preferences here, but I don't believe that high rises are wrong. Just not my preference.

Low-rise is also cheaper, and easier to insulate. I think the sweet spot is 4 floors, but 2 to 5 is okay, and even midrise can be made beautiful.

If people are interested in what beautiful midrise social housing look like, check out Le Plessis-Robinson near Paris

I think there is a simpler solution.

1. Land ownership should be an exclusively human right. Any ‘vampire’ entity (such as a corporation) that doesn’t naturally die shouldn’t be able to endlessly accumulate land.

2. The property tax rate should double for each additional property you own.

Regarding Point 2.

If I buy an uninhabited plot of land out in the desert or Forest where no one wants it, why should I pay higher taxes?

I bought forestland that is uninhabitable and remote. I am restoring it to healthy forest. When I die, I want to ensure that it continues to be forest land.

The best way to do that is via a conservation trust. I appreciate your sentiment, but I worry it edges out cases like mine.

What is foreclosure insurance?