I think Airbnb rentals need to be curtailed.

I'm my county there are 65k people. It's also the largest county by size in Utah Iirc, in my city which is the biggest city in the county there's around 40k.

When we had to move it was horrifying and scary trying to find a place. There seemed to be no vacancies. Someone posted a listing on Facebook marketplace and there were 20 replies in under 5 minutes.

However, the are 400 apartments that used to presumably be college(we're a college town) or regular residential homes.

So the irksome thing is the fear of being homeless is very real even if you have money to move to another place, there aren't any. But there's 400 places that could be available which would raise supply if short term rentals were banned or taxed steeply enough that revenue for short term might only be 500 more per month instead of 3000 more.

This is happening everywhere not just my part of fantasia.

Rather than targeting flipping, I think ownership of more than one housing unit should be taxed progressively and become prohibitive rapidly.

Under your scheme, if I own a property, it is cheaper for me to make it a single family home than to subdivide it into multiple units? Why are you punishing who make housing available to others?

I rent out one single family home that I couldn't sell when I moved and a 4 unit building where I currently live in one of the units. I never understand these comments. The 4 unit building could be torn down and made a SFH or I could build 14 units which my city desperately needs. If you keep adding rent control and payment vacations and eviction moratoriums and taxes it will be a SFH.

I think your dream is every property is tenancy in commons, but that is legal now and not popular. The reason is zoning. Rich people can compete with two families easily and by limiting the number of units that is all they need to compete with. Much more difficult to compete with 10 families if the lot is zoned for 10.

Anyway, these policy suggestions are maniacal. Go buy and build housing and you'll see how much work it is. Make a startup that makes TiC and construction easier. Go change zoning laws.

Making construction easier just makes those guys lives easier, I doubt it'll result in more housing. Look at the red states with no regulations like Louisiana. They're terrible places to live. Nothing gets fixed with no/low regulation.

I do think his idea about high taxes on a 2nd+ home makes sense. The only problem with it is that it doesn't apply globally, only nationally. You'll have rich people have a palace in the US, Spain, and Australia instead of 3 in the US.

For my own life and approach to this, I moved around a lot and lived in austerity saving up money for a home. I don't want zoning laws to change at all because there's already too many multi-tenant buildings. Pull up the sex and gun offender maps, it's disproportionately those people. And I'm currently a tenant myself (while obeying the laws and having a clean record).

I'd rather see taxes on 2nd+ homes than zoning change. We already built 'out' with suburbs and have plenty of land available for developers to build on and make money. With the internet we no longer have to all live in a city either. It seems to me like his idea, minus the global snag, is generally on the right track.

But I am not a fan of multi-tenant housing near whatever home I purchase, just because of the sort of short-sighted people that often make up renters. They should be in homes anyway, not renting, in an ideal scenario.

Do you feel that renters should be punished economically (which I think would be an inevitable consequence of that policy)?

I think amount of renters would rapidly drop off.

It's worth considering that some of us want to rent. I've moved for work a few times, so I rented because it wasn't worth the hassle of buying a house, living in it for 2 years, then selling it to move. Some people move to a big city to start a career, with the intentions of moving back towards home when they've cut their teeth.

Having the option to rent is a good thing, being forced to rent when you don't want to is a bad thing. Hopefully we can accommodate both.

I agree. Some to ownership. Others to homelessness.

It depends on what facilities the country would provide. Assuming it's USA it's homelessness. If it was another country, it might be provided social housing.

Why not skip the taxation and homelessness and just build the social housing?

That's also an option, however, it does not remove enough profits from land ownership rent seeking.

> it does not remove enough profits from land ownership rent seeking

You'd prefer to create excess misery to satisfy a sense of vengeance? Versus just solving the problem?

Land ownership rent seeking creates misery. It should be curbed.

What should people that expect/hope to move soon do?

What should young and poor people who can't afford a down payment do?

rent...

I think /u/carom agrees with you (that renting is the best choice for many), even if they don't realize it.

Both. And IRS penalties.