• This is a move in the dead wrong direction.

    We don’t need more 350 square-foot landlord-owned prefab boxes, we need affordable homes.

    The shift to a renter-only market (except of course for the wealthy) just locks people further into poverty and paycheck to paycheck subsistence, because there’s no accrual of home equity, there’s no generational wealth transfer of that equity, there’s no point at which you stop paying rent, and can easily survive on a fixed income…

    There are more vacant homes than unhoused people. We’re not lacking in homes, we’re lacking in the political will to solve the real housing crisis, which is overpriced homes.

    •  pbjamm   ( @pbjamm@beehaw.org ) OP
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      48 months ago

      Something like a Vacancy Tax would be helpful in insuring that more housing is available, it would do little to create more home ownership because the land itself is expensive even if nothing is on it.

      I see this as smart use of land. Instead of another Big Box store and sprawling parking lot the city gets the store and 800 more apartments in the same footprint.