alt Hacker NewsI think there should be a relatively simple solution. Tax the homeowners proportional to their homes' market value. Either you get enough tax revenue to build more houses, or the tax burden is too high for those NIMBY to remain at their beautiful suburban homes, and their houses will be back on the market.
But no, when we propose that, all those affluent bourgeois feeding on the young are suddenly poor grandmas just wanting to live the rest of their lives in peace.
Make up your mind, people. Are we going to fix the problem, or are we going to blame Jeff Bezos because some suburban schmucks oppose building apartments. Frankly I don't think Jeff Bezos even cares about apartments. (He has enough money to buy a city block, why would he care.) But it sure feels more righteous to hate Jeff Bezos than argue about real estate tax.
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Are you in California?
Most states (and other countries) do tax the homeowners proportional to their homes’ market value. California with its tax proportional to value at purchase is the outlier.
I think it’s largely just that people just don’t want to live near poor people, because they think they have bad culture/values/behavior, and will be risky to live near.
Based on comments I’ve seen at city council meetings about this stuff, there’s also some aspect of feeling like infrastructure is already overstressed, traffic is already bad, etc, which is largely an artifact of car-centric development patterns being incredibly wasteful/inefficient, and capping out at relatively low densities. But the existing development pattern is usually not a good fit for mass transit - the utilization is usually too low.
I think the California approach of aggressively upzoning near public transit is pretty good, except that it might cause resistance to public transit expansion.