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Comment by peterlk | Hacker News Reader

I’ve lived in and around mountain towns my whole life. There’s a relatively simple solution to this: taxation. If you don’t live there full time, you get to pay hefty taxes to the city/county. How do you verify this? Voter registration. If you’re not registered to vote at that address, you pay massive taxes. So, if you _really_ want to have a second home there, fine, but it’s going to be much less expensive for people who actually live there

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I’m not sure. A mountain chalet is already a property tax bonanza for a small town. A $10m Deer Valley slopeside house would bring in a ballpark of $100k in property tax per year, and the people rarely being present means they aren’t even using community services very often.

I don’t know if money is the problem. I think it’s more systemic; places like Aspen will NIMBY against any attempts to do meaningful housing projects.

I’m talking about much higher taxes than that. If you can afford a 10m slope-side deer valley home, make it a 1M+ annual tax.

The problem of people not being present cuts both ways, and I fall on the side of preferring people to be present. I want to live in a place where people are present in their communities - that doesn’t mean you have to go to every council meeting, but it does make you more invested in the quality of the neighborhood and town. Yes, you use more community services, but isn’t that the point? The local businesses have higher cash flow, you have to deal with that pothole on 7th that hasn’t been fixed yet, etc.

So people will make their most expensive/desirable property their address of record for voting purposes. Or they’ll find some other loophole like a LLC owning the property. Wealthy people are usually smart and determined and will do what they need to do to hold onto their money. That’s how they get wealthy or stay wealthy in the first place.

>That’s how they get wealthy or stay wealthy in the first place.

Most wealthy people are born into it. [1]

[1] https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/personal-finance/articles/st...

The same problem exists though! Maybe a rich Aspenite will pay a million dollar tax, but that doesn’t solve the NIMBY problem. Oh, and they bailed for somewhere cheaper

Is it actually a simple solution? Most places only have a small portion of their housing that's empty. That won't explain a 3x increase over 10 years. Here is a simpler solution: build high density housing, and use public money if you need to. That way we aren't unnecessarily rationing housing, but more importantly it will crash the local market and deliver divine retribution to speculators both large and small.

I think high density housing is a band-aid because there are sometimes significant infrastructure challenges to packing more people into a town. I’m not saying not to do it; I think it’s a good solution for many places, but I do not believe it is simpler than taxation

taxes are pretty regressive though. sure you lower the populace if a city by pushing out ppl who don’t want to pay, but you also push out ppl who literally can’t pay. i imagine this is most “essential workers” like service workers, retails, delivery, etc.

If they’re registered to vote in the municipality, they do not pay the heavy taxes. Those taxes are only paid by people who do not reside in the town but own property there. So local teachers, service workers, etc. pay “normal” (low) taxes

Not everyone can vote or is registered to vote.

For the purposes of shaping public policy, shouldn't the focus be on those who can vote? They comprise the body politic, after all.

That's a fair point -- justice would require admitting alternate forms of evidence of residence. Maybe receipts from over-the-counter credit card transactions at local businesses could serve.

Yeah, perhaps alternatives like permanent address on a government issued ID would be better. But exceptional circumstances should be the exception; the more exceptions are made, the more loopholes creep in

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