Housing Crisis

Post Reply New Topic

I got rid of all my investment properties in favour of a peaceful life.

They make a good investment to hold, but not to rent. Capital gain over rental income cashflow. Things may change if Chalmers gains power.

Ya but there's a lot of young people like myself who cant afford to rent them.

Yeah but 24 bathrooms? 49 floors?

I think you misunderstand what "overpopulation" means.

Room enough for people to live is one thing. Room enough to grow all their food is another thing. "Overpopulation" does not necessarily mean a world full of people packed like sardines. It means too much land devoted to farm land, cattle ranching, etc., with little or no arable land to spare -- or a danger of this becoming the case within a generation or two if the population keeps expanding at its current rate.


I don't consider density per se to be a problem. Not at all. On the contrary, for those of us who either can't or don't want to drive a car, it is best to live in a densely populated city where almost everything you need is within walking distance and the remainder can easily be gotten to by public transportation.

And, if fewer people drove cars, that would eliminate one of the major sources of greenhouse gases.

Furthermore, if you are any kind of oddball, the only places where you can reasonably expect to find friends are densely populated cities where there are lots of oddball groups and events of many different kinds.

Places where there are too many rich people need to TAX THE RICH. We need a mass movement to demand that politicians stop treating the presence of more and more rich people, and ever-increasing property values, as a purely good thing.


That's because, due to farm mechanization, there simply aren't a lot of jobs in most rural areas. And that's unlikely to change.


Wasn't always expensive. Most of NYC was actually quite cheap when I was younger.

Urban life is not inherently expensive. It is expensive these days due to various bad policies, e.g. zoning laws and a reluctance to tax the rich as much as they should be taxed.

A limited amount of gentrification is probably a good thing, because it does create jobs in local small businesses, and because it eliminates the opposite problem of abandoned buildings. (The latter can make a neighborhood VERY scary and cause a vicious downward spiral, as happened in the Bronx back in the 1960's and 1970's or so, and has happened more recently in various inland cities here in the U.S.A.)

But too much gentrification is clearly a bad thing and should be taxed, for the specific purpose of discouraging it.

Unfortunately, most politicians are obedient, first and foremost, to property owners who believe that they have a God-given right to eternally rising property values. Only a very loud and well-organized mass movement to TAX THE RICH can overcome this.

Personally I favor what might be called a "trendiness tax" or perhaps a "property value stabilization tax."

This would be a combination of progressive income tax surcharge and property tax surcharge on people above some minimum levels of both income and wealth, who either live or own non-business properties in areas where property taxes are rising above the general level of inflation. The amount of the tax surcharge would depend on how rapidly property values are rising.

If rich folks decide to move into an area where property values are going DOWN, they could avoid the tax that way. So the tax would help to stabilize property values in both directions.

I have been trying to relocate to NYC, San Francisco, or Seattle for years, but within the past five years, it went from requiring a $100k income to requiring almost $300k. Average home prices in all three metros are over $1 million (compared to about $350k in Houston).

Meanwhile, I am in a field where the average salary is just under $80k. I guess I'm doomed to live in red state hell forever.

You could move to New Mexico. It is a blue state with a low cost of living and has lots of welfare for its residents unlike Texas.