Moms 4 houses about to be evicted

[Kernen]

Yeah, you dont know how it works in the US.

Eviction is a difficult process with tons of protections built into the process that benefit the tenant. Generally, this includes a period during which the landlandlord or owner cannot try to remove them. Contempt strikes me as vanishingly unlikely in an eviction case against the tenant.

That sucks, honestly it should be unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause in my view for States to make it overly-burdensome to evict trespassers and squatters (if we were still that golden Lochner era of SCOTUS jurisprudence this would still be a viable legal or constitutional argument). Its ridiculous that the legal system bends over backwards to try and protect the interests and feelings of individuals with no valid or legitimate claim or entitlement to the item in question, at the expense of innocent property owners just trying to vindicate their basic rights. In a perfect world, eviction proceedings would be fast, simple, and efficient - prove you own the property, and unless the defendant can show he occupies the land under lease or licence, that's the end of the proceedings and you get your possession/eviction order. And if they don't leave then they go to jail. Its only fair and just.

This is so wrong it hurts.

Even under Lochner, it wouldnt be unconstitutional to impose these limits. The Lochner era was a time the Court seemed to recognize economic liberty, but often it was applied with a wanton approach to legal theory.


The eviction process is due process by any measure. Be because those living there have a right to make an evidentiary case regarding their possible possessors rights, and because the balance of equities suggests that losing money as a landlord is less harmful and prejudicial to your defense than being unexpectedly without shelter.

In a perfect world, there wouldnt need to be evictions, but barring that, an ideal eviction process is one that protects the vulnerable party, since most landlords are business entities.

Considering the vast equitable powers you're invoking, you should be careful about tossing around "fair and just" when comparing the bargaining position between landlord and tenant, even a squatting tenant.

[Liriena]

but what you are suggesting is the wholesale erasure of the property rights of a section of the population simply because you think they own too much stuff

Not quite. They own far more housing than they could ever objectively need and they do so for the expressed purpose of inflating housing prices for everyone else and turning a profit from it. And turning a profit is not and should never be the primary purpose of home ownership. This becomes even more morally unjustifiable when there is a homelessness problem, and entire generations who work but can't afford to buy a home in their own community, while much of the hoarded housing remains unused.

As another poster said, if you had mass starvation, and someone was hoarding food, not even to eat it themselves or their family, but to increase food's overall price, I would not hesitate to make that someone's behaviour illegal and to seize their hoarded food to redistribute it to those who actually need it to survive.

without any compensation for all the money and capital they poured into the purchase of those assets.

I'm sure slave owners poured and pour a lot of money and capital into the purchase of people as "assets", but that wouldn't make them deserving of compensation when their immoral business is no longer legal.

Housing is a human right. Everyone deserves a decent home. Nobody deserves to own entire apartment buildings just so they can price everyone else out of the neighbourhood.

In such a system, no one's property rights are safe

Personal property can and should always be kept safe. And if you want to build a home for your progeny, that's your right. But unless you are Gengis Khan, I doubt you'll ever have any real need for tens of pieces of housing property for posterity. If you want you and your kids to be rich, actually produce something for a change. Don't try to become a less classy feudal lord.

[Purgatio]

Yes, because they had no choice at all in getting hooked on Opiods they had to seek out and purchase illegally in order to abuse.

.....I mean, yes, it absolutely is. If you have economic and financial problems in your life, getting high and addicted to psychoactive substances solves nothing and is the attitude of someone who isn't interested in bettering their lot in life and would rather wallow and waste away in a short-term fantasy whilst refusing to be a productive member of society. Literally the height of self-indulgence.

A majority of people who are hooked on opioids were prescribed legal pain medications under the false pretense that the drugs were not addictive. It's NOT a bunch of junkies shooting heroine in their basement - it's ordinary people who got addicted without realizing it. If the latter were the case, Purdue Pharma, McKesson, and other drug companies wouldn't be getting slammed.
https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-e ... index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01 ... ester.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pu ... s-n1046526

Any sensible person with even half a brain knows that opioids are obviously addictive and will use such strong opioid painkillers in moderation, they only have themselves to blame for being reckless with their bodies and refusing to think about their long-term futures when they made a series of terrible choices.

[Liriena]

A majority of people who are hooked on opioids were prescribed legal pain medications under the false pretense that the drugs were not addictive. It's NOT a bunch of junkies shooting heroine in their basement - it's ordinary people who got addicted without realizing it. If the latter were the case, Purdue Pharma, McKesson, and other drug companies wouldn't be getting slammed.
https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-e ... index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01 ... ester.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pu ... s-n1046526

Any sensible person with even half a brain knows that opioids are obviously addictive and will use such strong opioid painkillers in moderation, they only have themselves to blame for being reckless with their bodies and refusing to think about their long-term futures when they made a series of terrible choices.

Reducing an epidemic problem with various underlying causes to "some individuals were dumber than me" is a very nice way to show that your politics are a dead weight on the rest of society and lack even the curiosity necessary to solve widespread problems.

[Purgatio]

That sucks, honestly it should be unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause in my view for States to make it overly-burdensome to evict trespassers and squatters (if we were still that golden Lochner era of SCOTUS jurisprudence this would still be a viable legal or constitutional argument). Its ridiculous that the legal system bends over backwards to try and protect the interests and feelings of individuals with no valid or legitimate claim or entitlement to the item in question, at the expense of innocent property owners just trying to vindicate their basic rights. In a perfect world, eviction proceedings would be fast, simple, and efficient - prove you own the property, and unless the defendant can show he occupies the land under lease or licence, that's the end of the proceedings and you get your possession/eviction order. And if they don't leave then they go to jail. Its only fair and just.

This is so wrong it hurts.

Even under Lochner, it wouldnt be unconstitutional to impose these limits. The Lochner era was a time the Court seemed to recognize economic liberty, but often it was applied with a wanton approach to legal theory. Lochner policy is best seen in Commerce Clause issues.

The eviction process is due process by any measure. Be because those living there have a right to make an evidentiary case regarding their possible possessors rights, and because the balance of equities suggests that losing money as a landlord is less harmful and prejudicial to your defense than being unexpectedly without shelter.

In a perfect world, there wouldnt need to be evictions, but barring that, an ideal eviction process is one that protects the vulnerable party, since most landlords are business entities.

Considering the vast equitable powers you're invoking, you should be careful about tossing around "fair and just" when comparing the bargaining position between landlord and tenant, even a squatting tenant.

The Lochner era jurisprudence was based on an understanding that the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause contains both procedural and substantive aspects, your claim that any eviction proceeding counts as due process only makes sense if you think the Due Process Clause only protects procedural rights, which is a position taken by some like Justice Scalia but has never been the law of the United States and certainly isn't the law of the United States now, not since Griswold v. Connecticut relied on Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of the Sisters to find that the Due Process Clause had a substantive component to it. Lochner era case law was based on an interpretation of Substantive Due Process to include economic liberty rights, inclusive of freedom of contract and protections over one's property, and an eviction proceeding that could result in a landowner effectively unilaterally losing control over his own property because someone else trespassed onto his property without his consent is a substantive deprivation of property. You can make a decent argument that Substantive Due Process doesn't exist (although in the present state of US case law this is most certainly not the case), but if you accept the Due Process Clause has a substantive component as well as a procedural one, then its a fair argument to be made that eviction proceedings that don't adequately safeguard the autonomous rights of property owners to the protection and security of their property rights, as against third party trespassers, amounts to such a substantive deprivation.

[Purgatio]

Any sensible person with even half a brain knows that opioids are obviously addictive and will use such strong opioid painkillers in moderation, they only have themselves to blame for being reckless with their bodies and refusing to think about their long-term futures when they made a series of terrible choices.

Reducing an epidemic problem with various underlying causes to "some individuals were dumber than me" is a very nice way to show that your politics are a dead weight on the rest of society and lack even the curiosity necessary to solve widespread problems.

If you overload on addictive psychoactive substances, get addicted, and ruin your life.....are you an intelligent person?

[The New California Republic]

Reducing an epidemic problem with various underlying causes to "some individuals were dumber than me" is a very nice way to show that your politics are a dead weight on the rest of society and lack even the curiosity necessary to solve widespread problems.

If you overload on addictive psychoactive substances, get addicted, and ruin your life.....are you an intelligent person?

Plenty of intellectuals in the past have had drug problems, so a drug problem is no marker in and of itself of intelligence or lack thereof.

[Purgatio]

but what you are suggesting is the wholesale erasure of the property rights of a section of the population simply because you think they own too much stuff

Not quite. They own far more housing than they could ever objectively need and they do so for the expressed purpose of inflating housing prices for everyone else and turning a profit from it. And turning a profit is not and should never be the primary purpose of home ownership. This becomes even more morally unjustifiable when there is a homelessness problem, and entire generations who work but can't afford to buy a home in their own community, while much of the hoarded housing remains unused.

As another poster said, if you had mass starvation, and someone was hoarding food, not even to eat it themselves or their family, but to increase food's overall price, I would not hesitate to make that someone's behaviour illegal and to seize their hoarded food to redistribute it to those who actually need it to survive.

without any compensation for all the money and capital they poured into the purchase of those assets.

I'm sure slave owners poured and pour a lot of money and capital into the purchase of people as "assets", but that wouldn't make them deserving of compensation when their immoral business is no longer legal.

Housing is a human right. Everyone deserves a decent home. Nobody deserves to own entire apartment buildings just so they can price everyone else out of the neighbourhood.

In such a system, no one's property rights are safe

Personal property can and should always be kept safe. And if you want to build a home for your progeny, that's your right. But unless you are Gengis Khan, I doubt you'll ever have any real need for tens of pieces of housing property for posterity. If you want you and your kids to be rich, actually produce something for a change. Don't try to become a less classy feudal lord.

First of all, the people who want their children and their families to be rich will earn money through productive economic activites, then save that money by investing it into capital assets that appreciate in value, rather than dissipating it all away on transient consumer goods. Profits from investment activities exist to incentivise people to make the decision to pour their income into something other than immediate short-term consumption, so there absolutely is value in creating a society where people know if they work hard and earn a lot of money, and delay gratification by pouring that money into investments like real estate, stocks, shares, bonds, mutual funds and what not, they can build a healthy portfolio and an affluent estate to provide for their partners and children and grandchildren's futures, safe and secure in the knowledge that the State will not retroactive erase the fruits of their labour, sacrifices and long-term thinking and planning for their future and that of their family. None of this is close to being a "less classy feudal lord".

Second of all, given that my argument is based on the principal of moral autonomy and individual self-determination, critical aspects of personhood and subjecthood, your argument about slavery isn't the best parallel since owning a human being obviously comes at the expense of the slave's personhood, whereas owning an inanimate thing like land or real estate doesn't carry the same effect. And no, housing is not a human right, you don't have a human right to someone else's property, that's like saying theft or robbery is a human right. A human right has to be able to withstand moral justification, and if it necessarily requires the abrogation or removal of another person's fundamental human rights, that calls into immediate question the normative justification of one's putative or asserted 'human right'.

[Liriena]

Reducing an epidemic problem with various underlying causes to "some individuals were dumber than me" is a very nice way to show that your politics are a dead weight on the rest of society and lack even the curiosity necessary to solve widespread problems.

If you overload on addictive psychoactive substances, get addicted, and ruin your life.....are you an intelligent person?

Are you even mildly curious about the political, socioeconomic and cultural circumstances that could lead to not just one, but millions of people in the same regions, of the same socioeconomic level, becoming addicted to opioids?

If your answer is no because "muh intelligence", then your participation in this discussion is useless at best and outright detrimental at worst.

[Rojava Free State]

Also most of the homeless in the US are mentally ill so asylums are appropriate. Reagan closing the asylums was a huge contributor to the homeless crisis.

Most people would prefer to live on the streets than in prison.

People who are in asylums need to be there. It's probably because they either can't take care of themselves or they are a danger to themselves

[Purgatio]

If you overload on addictive psychoactive substances, get addicted, and ruin your life.....are you an intelligent person?

Plenty of intellectuals in the past have had drug problems, so a drug problem is no marker in and of itself of intelligence or lack thereof.

Intellectuals, by definition, have not ruined their lives. But the sob stories people love to tell of the lives ruined by the opioid epidemic tell a very different story about the life outcomes of those so-called victims. Some people have the temerity to make something of themselves despite their drug addictions, which is great, but those who lack that strength and character have only themselves to blame for poor life choices.

[USS Monitor]

I think that's a reasonable idea.

What's the definition of an unoccupied home? Do homes reserved for summer vacations count? Or homes in foreign countries for you to stay in when you go on holiday to those places? This sounds like very undue and cruel interferences in the ability of families to live their lives and make plans for the household in peace.

If you can afford a vacation home, you're honestly not suffering that much if you have to pay a little extra tax. It would still be legal to own more than one home, and it would still be illegal for people to squat there without your permission. You'd be free to keep it if you think it's worth paying the tax.

I'd probably say if the home was not inhabited for at least one month out of the past year, then you should pay the vacancy tax for that year. This would mean the vacancy tax would not apply to seasonal homes that are used for a substantial part of the year, but it might apply to some vacation homes that get less use.

[Rojava Free State]

Since when did you become a communist? And assuming all the homeless are mentally ill. You're digging to Cbina.

I'm not a communist, that part was a joke.


And yes, most homeless people in the US are mentally ill. About 1/3rd are just full-blown nutcases, and the rest is made up for by addicts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_and_mental_health

All I'm seeing is that 25% are basketcases. Nothing about the rest being drug addicts, probably cause they aren't and instead are a mix of illegal immigrants, people who lost their jobs back in 2008, war veterans and abuse victims.

[Purgatio]

If you overload on addictive psychoactive substances, get addicted, and ruin your life.....are you an intelligent person?

Are you even mildly curious about the political, socioeconomic and cultural circumstances that could lead to not just one, but millions of people in the same regions, of the same socioeconomic level, becoming addicted to opioids?

If your answer is no because "muh intelligence", then your participation in this discussion is useless at best and outright detrimental at worst.

Sure, of course I'm curious, but I can accept that wider societal circumstances play a role in whether social trends exist or not, whilst not excusing the specific individuals involved of basic personal responsibility. For example, I can accept that patriarchal norms and values play a role in encouraging Violence Against Women, without trying to make batterers and rapists out to be helpless and vulnerable victims of society. Your logical fallacy lies in bafflingly assuming that anyone who believes in moral agency and individual responsibility for bad and immoral choices over one's life is mutually exclusive to having an informed discussion about wider social trends that might be causative of that outcome, without erasing the individual's responsibility and agency for his choices.

[The Emerald Legion]

but what you are suggesting is the wholesale erasure of the property rights of a section of the population simply because you think they own too much stuff

Not quite. They own far more housing than they could ever objectively need and they do so for the expressed purpose of inflating housing prices for everyone else and turning a profit from it. And turning a profit is not and should never be the primary purpose of home ownership. This becomes even more morally unjustifiable when there is a homelessness problem, and entire generations who work but can't afford to buy a home in their own community, while much of the hoarded housing remains unused.

As another poster said, if you had mass starvation, and someone was hoarding food, not even to eat it themselves or their family, but to increase food's overall price, I would not hesitate to make that someone's behaviour illegal and to seize their hoarded food to redistribute it to those who actually need it to survive.

without any compensation for all the money and capital they poured into the purchase of those assets.

I'm sure slave owners poured and pour a lot of money and capital into the purchase of people as "assets", but that wouldn't make them deserving of compensation when their immoral business is no longer legal.

Housing is a human right. Everyone deserves a decent home. Nobody deserves to own entire apartment buildings just so they can price everyone else out of the neighbourhood.

In such a system, no one's property rights are safe

Personal property can and should always be kept safe. And if you want to build a home for your progeny, that's your right. But unless you are Gengis Khan, I doubt you'll ever have any real need for tens of pieces of housing property for posterity. If you want you and your kids to be rich, actually produce something for a change. Don't try to become a less classy feudal lord.

Two things.

1.) Housing is not a human right. The very idea is ridiculous.

2.) You don't respect actual Human rights, why should anyone respect your made up ones?

[Rojava Free State]

Are you even mildly curious about the political, socioeconomic and cultural circumstances that could lead to not just one, but millions of people in the same regions, of the same socioeconomic level, becoming addicted to opioids?

If your answer is no because "muh intelligence", then your participation in this discussion is useless at best and outright detrimental at worst.

Sure, of course I'm curious, but I can accept that wider societal circumstances play a role in whether social trends exist or not, whilst not excusing the specific individuals involved of basic personal responsibility. For example, I can accept that patriarchal norms and values play a role in encouraging Violence Against Women, without trying to make batterers and rapists out to be helpless and vulnerable victims of society. Your logical fallacy lies in bafflingly assuming that anyone who believes in moral agency and individual responsibility for bad and immoral choices over one's life is mutually exclusive to having an informed discussion about wider social trends that might be causative of that outcome, without erasing the individual's responsibility and agency for his choices.

A lot of people become addicts as kids when they're still vulnerable and impressionable and by the time they know they have a problem, it's reached new levels of agony.

To simply dismiss addicts as dumbasses who deserve to die is pretty cruel dude. Take it from one of the "former dumbasses who deserve what they get" allegedly, not cool

[The New California Republic]

Plenty of intellectuals in the past have had drug problems, so a drug problem is no marker in and of itself of intelligence or lack thereof.

Intellectuals, by definition, have not ruined their lives.

According to what definition?

[Purgatio]

What's the definition of an unoccupied home? Do homes reserved for summer vacations count? Or homes in foreign countries for you to stay in when you go on holiday to those places? This sounds like very undue and cruel interferences in the ability of families to live their lives and make plans for the household in peace.

If you can afford a vacation home, you're honestly not suffering that much if you have to pay a little extra tax. It would still be legal to own more than one home, and it would still be illegal for people to squat there without your permission. You'd be free to keep it if you think it's worth paying the tax.

I'd probably say if the home was not inhabited for at least one month out of the past year, then you should pay the vacancy tax for that year. This would mean the vacancy tax would not apply to seasonal homes that are used for a substantial part of the year, but it might apply to some vacation homes that get less use.

I don't see why people should be financially penalised for having the resources to make sound financial and capital investments for their family's future, or making private arrangements for their household's housing situation, including buying spare homes to be left vacant in the event of holidays or short fleeting summers that may be spent in one locale or another. These are perfectly legitimate choices for a family to make, if they have the resources to make them, and should not result in any vindictive taxation borne largely out of the public's class-based envy if nothing else.

[Rojava Free State]

Not quite. They own far more housing than they could ever objectively need and they do so for the expressed purpose of inflating housing prices for everyone else and turning a profit from it. And turning a profit is not and should never be the primary purpose of home ownership. This becomes even more morally unjustifiable when there is a homelessness problem, and entire generations who work but can't afford to buy a home in their own community, while much of the hoarded housing remains unused.

As another poster said, if you had mass starvation, and someone was hoarding food, not even to eat it themselves or their family, but to increase food's overall price, I would not hesitate to make that someone's behaviour illegal and to seize their hoarded food to redistribute it to those who actually need it to survive.


I'm sure slave owners poured and pour a lot of money and capital into the purchase of people as "assets", but that wouldn't make them deserving of compensation when their immoral business is no longer legal.

Housing is a human right. Everyone deserves a decent home. Nobody deserves to own entire apartment buildings just so they can price everyone else out of the neighbourhood.


Personal property can and should always be kept safe. And if you want to build a home for your progeny, that's your right. But unless you are Gengis Khan, I doubt you'll ever have any real need for tens of pieces of housing property for posterity. If you want you and your kids to be rich, actually produce something for a change. Don't try to become a less classy feudal lord.

Two things.

1.) Housing is not a human right. The very idea is ridiculous.

2.) You don't respect actual Human rights, why should anyone respect your made up ones?

Having shelter isn't a human right?

[Purgatio]

Intellectuals, by definition, have not ruined their lives.

According to what definition?

If you are an academic, you are clearly a productive member of society, unlike most who are heavily addicted to hard psychoactive substances, who can't do anything useful in the economy because they can't properly function in that dessicated physiological state.

[Kernen]

The Lochner era jurisprudence was based on an understanding that the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause contains both procedural and substantive aspects, your claim that any eviction proceeding counts as due process only makes sense if you think the Due Process Clause only protects procedural rights, which is a position taken by some like Justice Scalia but has never been the law of the United States and certainly isn't the law of the United States now, not since Griswold v. Connecticut relied on Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of the Sisters to find that the Due Process Clause had a substantive component to it.

Except that an eviction hearing isn't protecting your substantive rights to squat, they're protecting your procedural rights to prove your case without facing undue prejudice. You're entirely right about constitutional protections and substantive due process...except the eviction hearing protections are rooted in procedural due process.

Lochner era case law was based on an interpretation of Substantive Due Process to include economic liberty rights, inclusive of freedom of contract and protections over one's property, and an eviction proceeding that could result in a landowner effectively unilaterally losing control over his own property because someone else trespassed onto his property without his consent is a substantive deprivation of property.

And, again, the process of testing competing rights is a procedural question. And even if it was substantive, the Lochner court repeatedly recognized that limits on economic liberty were permissible for greater goods to society. Champion v. Ames, Hoke v. United States, Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland Railway...

You can make a decent argument that Substantive Due Process doesn't exist (although in the present state of US case law this is most certainly not the case), but if you accept the Due Process Clause has a substantive component as well as a procedural one, then its a fair argument to be made that eviction proceedings that don't adequately safeguard the autonomous rights of property owners to the protection and security of their property rights, as against third party trespassers, amounts to such a substantive deprivation.

A position entirely disconnected with modern policies and attitudes towards property. The idea that your right to property includes the right to prevent other parties from putting forward a potentially cognizable defense by prejudicing them with a speedy hearing, for which 1. the landlord is losing nothing but money, 2. the risk of loss for the squatter is homelessness, and thus an inability to effectively relocate, and 3. the the difficulty of maintaining a legal defense with a small budget (such tenants are almost always pro se) is compounded by trying to find alternative housing, is entirely inconsistent with the underlying conceptions of justice inherent in such procedure.

Furthermore, your hyper-fedsoc position regarding the free use of equity to enforce these precepts ignores the underlying philosophy of equity, which is to look to the essential fairness and balance the competing interests at stake. While it isn't hard to see that a squatter will eventually lose, speeding up the procedure to expose them to the risk of violating an order and facing contempt when they are the prejudiced party is itself unfair, especially considering the tenant will almost always win the balance of equities based on the disparity of power between a landlord and a tenant and on the essential risk of homelessness.

This makes for an appalling but well-considered Con Law exam answer, but misses the part of practice where the rubber hits the road when it comes to working with judges and evictions.

[The New California Republic]

Housing is not a human right. The very idea is ridiculous.

Strange, because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights completely contradicts you:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_housing

[Purgatio]

Sure, of course I'm curious, but I can accept that wider societal circumstances play a role in whether social trends exist or not, whilst not excusing the specific individuals involved of basic personal responsibility. For example, I can accept that patriarchal norms and values play a role in encouraging Violence Against Women, without trying to make batterers and rapists out to be helpless and vulnerable victims of society. Your logical fallacy lies in bafflingly assuming that anyone who believes in moral agency and individual responsibility for bad and immoral choices over one's life is mutually exclusive to having an informed discussion about wider social trends that might be causative of that outcome, without erasing the individual's responsibility and agency for his choices.

A lot of people become addicts as kids when they're still vulnerable and impressionable and by the time they know they have a problem, it's reached new levels of agony.

To simply dismiss addicts as dumbasses who deserve to die is pretty cruel dude. Take it from one of the "former dumbasses who deserve what they get" allegedly, not cool

So just because you are a kid you have no responsibility for your actions? I'd love to hear you suggest that school bullies who drive other kids to suicide or juveniles who commit violent crimes like rape have not done anything worthy of condemnation because they are "vulnerable and impressionable" and can't be held responsible for the consequences of their own choices. That's nonsense, kids are still thinking human beings, they are still persons, they don't get a free pass for making bad choices and suffering the consequences of those choices. Maybe they should have had the good sense to make better choices when they had the chance.

[Gormwood]

1.) Housing is not a human right. The very idea is ridiculous.

2.) You don't respect actual Human rights, why should anyone respect your made up ones?

Comfortable and secure shelter is not a human right to you, but gunz are. That is one hell of a priority.

[USS Monitor]

If you can afford a vacation home, you're honestly not suffering that much if you have to pay a little extra tax. It would still be legal to own more than one home, and it would still be illegal for people to squat there without your permission. You'd be free to keep it if you think it's worth paying the tax.

I'd probably say if the home was not inhabited for at least one month out of the past year, then you should pay the vacancy tax for that year. This would mean the vacancy tax would not apply to seasonal homes that are used for a substantial part of the year, but it might apply to some vacation homes that get less use.

I don't see why people should be financially penalised for having the resources to make sound financial and capital investments for their family's future, or making private arrangements for their household's housing situation, including buying spare homes to be left vacant in the event of holidays or short fleeting summers that may be spent in one locale or another. These are perfectly legitimate choices for a family to make, if they have the resources to make them, and should not result in any vindictive taxation borne largely out of the public's class-based envy if nothing else.

If you stay for the summer, you wouldn't pay the tax. If you want to spend the summer somewhere different every year, just fucking rent a place instead of buy it.