How should the U.S. address its ongoing housing crisis?

[Ayytaly]

Would you like to elaborate how the states would do such a thing?

Proletarians + guns

The projects are full of guns. Too bad it's bad people who have them.

[The Emerald Legion]

Embrace our cyberpunk reality and build coffin motels/apartments.

[Maricarland]

It may be a good idea for the U.S. to copy what Germany just did.

We Seized 240K Properties From Corporate Landlords Through Grassroots Organizing

[The Emerald Legion]

It may be a good idea for the U.S. to copy what Germany just did.

We Seized 240K Properties From Corporate Landlords Through Grassroots Organizing

Why? Corporate home ownership is a tiny fraction of the market. Homes are generally a bad investment because they just go down in value unless you actively spend money on upkeep.

[Kowani]

It may be a good idea for the U.S. to copy what Germany just did.

We Seized 240K Properties From Corporate Landlords Through Grassroots Organizing

Why? Corporate home ownership is a tiny fraction of the market. Homes are generally a bad investment because they just go down in value unless you actively spend money on upkeep.

very true that corporate homeownership is nowhere near the cause of the problem
what is not true is that homes are a bad investment
the median home value has skyrocketed over time for a reason

[Maricarland]

It may be a good idea for the U.S. to copy what Germany just did.

We Seized 240K Properties From Corporate Landlords Through Grassroots Organizing

Why? Corporate home ownership is a tiny fraction of the market. Homes are generally a bad investment because they just go down in value unless you actively spend money on upkeep.

Oh, I agree home ownership is a bad investment. Here is another article that demonstrates that: Home Ownership is Still Mostly Renting

However, that is why expropriating housing stock from landlords, banks, and corporations, and having public housing or social housing (which is what this German movement did), is important to guarantee housing to people and end homelessness (P.S. if we actually eliminated homelessness, which we should, the value of almost all houses on the housing market will sink dramatically).

[Haganham]

Why? Corporate home ownership is a tiny fraction of the market. Homes are generally a bad investment because they just go down in value unless you actively spend money on upkeep.

very true that corporate homeownership is nowhere near the cause of the problem
what is not true is that homes are a bad investment
the median home value has skyrocketed over time for a reason

The reason: the government has put the country into recession on multiple occasions in order to prevent real estate markets from correcting themselves.
A house is about as good an investment as a car. That is to say, terrible. The best way to address the housing crisis is simply to allow home prices to fall.

[Forsher]

very true that corporate homeownership is nowhere near the cause of the problem
what is not true is that homes are a bad investment
the median home value has skyrocketed over time for a reason

The reason: the government has put the country into recession on multiple occasions in order to prevent real estate markets from correcting themselves.
A house is about as good an investment as a car. That is to say, terrible. The best way to address the housing crisis is simply to allow home prices to fall.

Land should, in a properly functioning economy (i.e. one without booms and busts), always appreciate because its value is tied to economic activity. Also, it can't depreciate.

Cars, in contrast, should always depreciate in value because (1) wear and tear, (2) they're mass produced, (3) they're constantly being rendered obsolete by improved versions of the technology and (4) also, they're an inferior product supported only by mass government subsidisation (trains are the superior technology).

What makes land/property such a terrible long term investment is that a properly functioning economy does not exist but land really does reflect the value of economic activity in a geography very closely. So, when that geography inevitably enters a recessionary period, the value of land/property plummets, wiping out a lot of the speculators/investors.

Basically, housing speculation is a bit like betting double or nothing in Russian Roulette. Every chamber you survive brings massive reward so you're always got FOMO about the money on the table, but if you hang around until the bust, you're dead.

Now, sure, there are examples of recessions that don't have huge losses in the real estate sector... see Covid-19... but I'm willing to bet most of those examples are cases where shocks were expected to be temporary. The difference, in other words, between the GFC and Covid is that people expected a normal as soon as Covid was gone (or, alternatively, as soon as they were able to get to the point where the people started to agree that profits > people, which turned out to be almost immediately in the UK and US), but with the GFC everyone spent the entire time worrying about a double, triple, quadruple etc. dip recession. Though, also, the GFC was caused by the real estate market so there is that to consider.

[Resilient Acceleration]

I mean Georgist ideas has the most appeal here in terms of policies that actually have a realistic chance of passing: tax empty houses. Preferebly tax them to such an extreme extent that it forces landlords to compete for tenants, even if it meant a race to the bottom.

[Haganham]

I mean Georgist ideas has the most appeal here in terms of policies that actually have a realistic chance of passing: tax empty houses. Preferebly tax them to such an extreme extent that it forces landlords to compete for tenants, even if it meant a race to the bottom.

they'll just raise rent

[Genivaria]

I mean Georgist ideas has the most appeal here in terms of policies that actually have a realistic chance of passing: tax empty houses. Preferebly tax them to such an extreme extent that it forces landlords to compete for tenants, even if it meant a race to the bottom.

they'll just raise rent

Rent Caps are must.

[Maricarland]

they'll just raise rent

Rent Caps are must.

While I support rent caps (rent control), another alternative is simply to have a public competitor to private landlords, where everyone who wants one can get an affordable (based on their income) or even rent-free publicly (or socially) owned home that is kept in high quality condition (maintained to avoid leaks and degradation, accessible for the disabled, high air quality, passive design to conserve energy, sound proofing to enhance sleep and help people with sensory needs, walkability, green spaces, UV radiation screens on windows, and so on...). Then private landlords will have to make their properties truly high quality to entice tenants away from the high quality and affordable or free public housing, and no matter how nice they make their properties there will probably be a limit to how much they can charge without chasing away tenants, now that the tenants actually have an alternative and therefore the power to refuse the terms set by private landlords.

[Herador]

Embrace our cyberpunk reality and build coffin motels/apartments.

Man, I'm pissed. I thought we'd get cyberlimbs and orc waifu's and a dragon president but all we got is Jeff Bezos and climate change.

This ride sucks and I want off.

[Picairn]

I mean Georgist ideas has the most appeal here in terms of policies that actually have a realistic chance of passing: tax empty houses. Preferebly tax them to such an extreme extent that it forces landlords to compete for tenants, even if it meant a race to the bottom.

Georgism calls for taxing unimproved land, not property.

they'll just raise rent

Land value taxes don't raise prices. Because the supply of land is fixed, the price of land rents depends on what tenants can pay, not on landlord expenses, therefore the landlords can't pass on the costs to the tenants.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... 3080911471

[Ifreann]

I mean Georgist ideas has the most appeal here in terms of policies that actually have a realistic chance of passing: tax empty houses. Preferebly tax them to such an extreme extent that it forces landlords to compete for tenants, even if it meant a race to the bottom.

they'll just raise rent

I had a thought once of taxing rental income proportionally to how affordable the rent being charged is. Income from charging a rent so low that it can be easily covered by someone on minimum wage would have a very low rate of tax, possibly zero, possibly even a negative tax. The higher the income a tenant would need to comfortably cover the rent, the higher the tax. The idea being to remove the incentive of landlords to charge the highest possible rent. I mean, ideally I would prefer that there not be a profit motive involved at all, but while there is then I figure we should try and turn that motive towards providing affordable housing.

[Grave_n_idle]

I originally left this question as a post on reddit, but I am curious as to the thoughts of the people here at NationStates.

Here is my opinion:

As for me, I think one the main drivers of this problem is people treat housing as an investment asset instead of as homes. I think that there are a number of policies that the federal government can enact to help resolve the housing crisis, such as:

Market Regulation

• Place a high tax on vacant properties. This way people who have extra housing while others don't have housing, will be motivated to either sell their extra housing or rent it out, just to avoid the tax, and they will have to sell or rent it at an affordable rate or else they won't get any buyers or tenants and the housing will still be vacant and the owner subject to the tax.
• Enact a national rent control program to control the rate of rent inflation. Because it is national, landlords can't just avoid the regulation by leaving areas with rent control, because everywhere will have the rent control. This however must apply to all rental housing (existing and new), so to avoid landlords jacking up rents on new tenants. Landlords may decided to just stop renting, but then they would be subject to the vacant property tax and they won't make any money; even if they would lose money by renting out at the rent controlled rates for some reason, the vacant property tax should make it so that they would lose more money by not renting out at the rent controlled rates.
• Placing limitations on home owner associations (HOAs) and providing more options for communities to abolish their HOAs, thereby requiring the locality to cover the services that the HOA provided, so that homeowners subject to HOAs don't have essentially double taxation from both the locality's taxes and fees and the HOA's fees, for no additional increase in real services. This will at least make some housing more affordable.

Mortgage Reform

• Providing an option for households whose income decreased sometime after taking out their mortgage or whom have an sudden and unexpected cost, like medical debt (though I would prefer if we just switched to single-payer Medicare for All), to have partial mortgage loan forgiveness/cancellation, which the lender must absorb as a loss, and won't affect the borrowers credit in any way.
• Providing an alternative way to get a mortgage besides private banks, by offering affordable mortgages through public banking, and by providing subsidies and other benefits to credit unions and community banks to offer affordable mortgages.
• Enacting regulations that make it easier to refinance, always in favor of the borrower and never in favor of the lender.

Alternatives to the Private Market

• To ensure that everyone can get housing no matter what, we should offer a universal guarantee to high quality and rent-free public housing to all residents who want it. This will also serve to force private landlords to increase the quality of their rental properties if they want to attract any tenants, as tenants would have the affordable and appealing option to just go to the public housing option (any time you have a public competitor that offers a universal guarantee, such as a federal job guarantee or a public option for health insurance or anything, you force the private sector to at a minimum match the public competitor's offer). Even if we don't want to go that far, we can at least set up a public housing system similar to Singapore's.
• We can also support other forms of social housing, besides a government's public option, such as housing cooperatives, by providing subsidies and other advantages to social housing.
• We should establish and subsidize community land trusts, for people seeking to become homeowners without becoming housing speculators as well.
• Giving more power to tenants to establish the tenant equivalents of unions, so that they may collectively negotiate prices, conditions, rules, evictions, etc... and so that they may go on a rent strike if needed.

Addressing Supply

• NOTE: The U.S. has more than enough vacant homes per homeless person (person, not household), so there is not a problem with real supply, and the policies listed above would lead to more vacant housing reentering the rental market or housing market. However, there are some local areas in the U.S. where demand does outstrip supply, and a lot of the vacant housing in the U.S. is in a state of disrepair or in reduced livability for one reason or another. These reasons necessitate addressing housing supply.
• We should establish and subsidize, non-profit community development corporations (CDCs), to build more high quality and affordable housing to be sold to the people (not to corporate landlords, housing speculators, or investors), and to repair and retrofit existing housing. This service can also be provided by a public jobs program, such as a green new deal, or even a federal job guarantee. This will also help provide enough supply for a public or social housing program if such programs fail to purchase enough housing supply from the private market.
• I know that there is an argument for easing, reducing, or eliminating zoning regulations to make it easier for construction corporations to build more housing, however I think that this is unnecessary and may have some serious negatives as well. That said, I am willing to compromise on this pro-market policy, especially regarding making things easier for community development corporations and construction cooperatives. I am also supportive of mixed-use planning/zoning, and if easing zoning regulations leads to more mixed-use planning/zoning, I would be a little more supportive of easing zoning regulations as well.

How SHOULD the US deal with the housing crisis, or how WILL the US deal with the crisis.

How the US will deal with it... la la la, the market will sort it out.

How the US should deal with it... well, anything except that.


The logical answer is the option of public housing in a mixed market. And being the logical answer, it won't ever be discussed.

[The Emerald Legion]

Embrace our cyberpunk reality and build coffin motels/apartments.

Man, I'm pissed. I thought we'd get cyberlimbs and orc waifu's and a dragon president but all we got is Jeff Bezos and climate change.

This ride sucks and I want off.

I mean, we have Cyber Limbs.