The legal system should encourage people moving into unoccupied houses. The hoarding of real estate is bad for society.
Yeah, fast progressively higher tax rates based on the number of apples you own would be perfectly reasonable.
Pretty sure in most of the world, you wouldn't last long without some form of shelter or housing.
90% of the next generation is going to die from homelessness?
If housing is a right, then it would make more sense to list the things that are not human rights. What else, Diet Coke delivered daily? Maybe a new car?
If someone says something that seems ridiculous, but they're speaking seriously, sincerely, or about a matter they've given some thought, then there might be a chance you're simply misunderstanding them.
Tangentially: "an inalienable right to the property and labor of another person" is not that ridiculous of an idea. You already have a right to the labor of other people in nearly every society on earth. If the people where you live pay taxes, and even if you didn't avail yourself of public roads and whatnot, you still enjoy having a court system and law enforcement to uphold your rights, you enjoy a military to defend your country, you may enjoy the stability of a currency, and so on, and (if you are a native citizen) you get all of this merely for having been born. [And people don't get to opt out – people have to pay taxes even if they want to live alone in the wilderness, and to be relieved of that burden, in the United States we have to pay a fee to renounce our citizenship, even assuming we have the means to emigrate.] If you think at only a slightly larger scale, you might view us all as being stuck on Earth together and all members of a global society, unable to avoid participating to at least some degree.
[To be clear, I personally don't like the idea of owing anyone anything, especially when I presumably didn't choose to be born, but life is inherently unfair to begin with and also very difficult, so I can understand someone arguing that it's worth giving up the fight for a particular fairness in exchange for a better life overall. Also, other people may not have the same notions of fairness as me; I can imagine someone arguing that guaranteed access to housing makes the world more fair.]
I'd agree that it would be ridiculous to claim housing is a "natural right" as opposed to a potential "legal right", since it's a contradiction almost definitionally. Although not everyone agrees that natural rights exist, or what they are precisely.
† You'll die without sleep, you'll die from exposure to the cold, you'll catch disease or be unable to hold a job if you don't bathe or clean yourself, you'll suffer from serious mental illness if you've not a space that's reasonably safe and secure some fraction of the time, and so on.
The problem is that the supply of housing is too low. Banning investment in housing might even make this problem worse by reducing the amount of real resources dedicated to construction, making home-building a riskier and less-appealing enterprise.
If the supply of food drops too low, eg. during the world wars, you do get rationing which does exactly that.
In fact we should put a limit on any new developments on currently undeveloped land...
In that context, were already dramatically behind the ball on ensuring enough housing unless we take housing from those who already have excess housing.
Yes, we can build condos etc, but they don't exist now and there aren't enough planned.
You are dismissing my solution because we aren't currently doing it yet your is even less realistic?
Really...
Instead of getting married I put the second home under my spouses name as a primary residence.
What if an old person gets injured and moves in with family but there is a chance they can recover? Slam them with taxes for a second home?
What if someone is on a temporary work assignment and buys a small place in another state for 2 years?
What if someone is a traveling nurse and buys a couple small apartments in the cities they work?
Sounds like a nightmare of exceptions and bureaucracy.
The only cost is assessment, which is already done, instead of an entire new bureaucracy keeping tabs on how much everyone utilizing each piece of property.
In the extreme case, this scheme would be Georgism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
This has been trotted out for many different problems, and I have yet to see taxes resolve any issue they are supposed to fix.
Carbon taxes don't reduce carbon use, fuel taxes don't reduce fuel use, sin taxes don't reduce soda consumption, cigarette taxes encourage black market activity, drug taxes don't reduce drug usage, etc...
Indirect action, like taxes, are a shot off the bow. The next step is direct action.
If the property is correctly maintained, a law-abiding squatter is preferable to a long-term absentee landlord who selfishly chooses to keep his or her house empty. It's a far greater loss to society to have the squatter as homeless. Buy NFTs if you want artificial scarcity.
(This is different than my feelings about people who steal homes, such as in this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64547396)
In those cases those peoples rights of ownership to their homes should be upheld. Otherwise, I agree that we should go hard against property hoarding.
Is he a “hoarder”?
The point is that there are very few good reasons. Public policy should have as its core goal that housing is used for homes.
To pick your first example: keeping your old home while you work abroad for a year seems not unreasonable. But demanding that you place it on the market as a rental (or sell it) if you're gone for 4-10 (!) seems likewise like a very reasonable regulation to me.
My situation is exactly that, I left my apartment first time for 3 years. Got fired and had to return. This time it’s six years already, haven’t been “home” even once since then. I don’t have anyone to help me manage the rental. Not selling the apartment right now because I’m waiting for citizenship in a different country. Which might not work out, thus I’ll need a place to return to. Yes, my situation is anecdotal, can’t disagree. But forcing me to rent out with more taxes doesn’t sound fair as well. Especially that in many places it’s the government who created all that bureaucracy which prevents people to build new houses inflating prices and all that.
"Your home has to have people in it" is, 100%, a valid policy goal. And in extremis, paradigms like adverse possession exist to ensure this.
Yes, people need and should be housed. No, that doesn't mean they need _my_ house. Build up public housing resources. If the govt wants to buy my property at market rate and give it away, and I agree to sell, go for it.
Otherwise, I hear you have a good retirement fund that you spent years building. I didn't didn't do that, so just give me half of what you saved and we will call it fair.
All resources are scarce including life saving medical tech. Do you force redistribution on all resources and assets?
You obviously don't seize obscure collectibles because there's limited public interest in such a collection. But that too has limits at the "logical absurdity" extreme: you might seize a historical artifact or painting from a private collector because it was looted from a museum 90 years ago before re-entering the private market after a few decades.
And, yeah, you might seize an abandoned property to prevent the community it's in from decaying.
I feel that if you can show something is abandoned, it can be up for grabs, including my personal property.
Now to define "abandoned."
In my home town, a potentially lucrative piece of real estate was fenced and not maintained because the owner was pissed at the city. The only reason they held it was because "fuck you city." I could see an argument as saying that it is abandoned and should be forced to be used. I can also see that as free speech because the owner was making a statement about local ordinances. Is it abandoned or an active political statement?
Aside from the obvious goal of keeping out trespassers, I'd be willing to bet the fence was added based on legal advice. In a few years there will probably need to be some further "improvement". Perhaps as simple as replacing the fence.
We're going to do that on a case by case basis depending on reasonable things like the user's need for it, other people's need for it, what the neighbours think of it etc.
With courts and whatnot.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
Kind of reminds me if the old joke:
A guy asks a gal if she'll sleep with him for $10M. She, says yes. He asks what about for $100 and she is offended: "what kind of woman do you think I am!?" To which he replies, "we've already determined that, now we are just haggling over the price."
Where do you live during that time?
> why should that mean I don't keep my paid for property?
Because someone may want to live somewhere but land is too expensive because everyone is hoarding it?
> At what threshold do you tell someone: fuck you and your property, we are taking it because we want it.
"residential housing not being used as a residence for more than N years"?
> Where do you live during that time?
Antarctic Research Station followed by a backpacking trip through Europe.
>> why should that mean I don't keep my paid for property?
> Because someone may want to live somewhere but land is too expensive because everyone is hoarding it?
Food gets expensive; let the hungry take, literally, from your kitchen? Not everyone can live in downtown, some must go to the sticks. West Virginia has some land at $1000 an acre. What is the right density in the city? How small should homes be? How many to a room?
>> At what threshold do you tell someone: fuck you and your property, we are taking it because we want it.
> "residential housing not being used as a residence for more than N years"?
Prove I didn't stop by for a few days N-1 years ago.
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Affordable housing is a real need, and local governments and city planners should work to make that so. You don't get to take my family's nth-generation home because my area is popular and we don't use it in a way you approve.
And please don't give this BS about generations. Just ask yourself: would you sell your grandgrandpa's home if you knew tomorrow its price was not up but got halved, day after day? There's the answer about your true motivations.
> Prove I didn't stop by for a few days N-1 years ago.
Stopping by != using as residence. I stop by local Mcd occasionally, don't mean I live there.
I'm vehemently not a communist but this sort of entitlement is cancer on humanity. Land is zero sum and a commons. These things are never not regulated in a healthy society. Even in US owning estate never means you are free to do anything you want with it, even if you live in it. Not hoarding it is only another one of those rules, sadly not supported by law enough.
Would I sell my grandpa's house? Depends on if I want to move in later, or help my kids move in when they are out of the house in N years. Just because you might abandon a family cabin/estate/ranch/remote-land knowing the price will drop doesn't mean others will.
And how long must one inhabit a property per what unit of duration to maintain ownership? 1 month a year? 6+ months a decade?
In my case, I'm talking 10 acres off some highway in Montana. I'll sell it if or when it is necessary. I'm working out of state, so I have two homes.
You want some real estate? Work your ass off, save money, invest in yourself. Might have to move. Might have to change your lifestyle. I couldn't afford California so I had to leave. Poor people emigrate still and provide better lives for their kids. Not everyone gets to live in their favorite city. Sucks.
Sell your iPhone and buy an acre in West Virginia.
Look, there are inequities and basic needs can be hard in many areas to secure. That is all of human history. We keep working at it. The solution is not to force me to sell my 10 acres in Montana.
Property rights exist, and people who didn't sacrifice for such things don't understand. They just want things handed to them.