Comment by bluGill
1 day ago
Retirees have been doing this for as long as humans have owned property. Then they die and the house moves on. There is good reason someone will want to live in a house that is larger than they need.
If there are not enough houses don't blame that on existing houses.
> Retirees have been doing this for as long as humans have owned property.
Absolutely not. Extended families lived under the same roof for most of human history. This is a Nuclear Family problem, which only emerged in the 20th century.
The poor widow living alone is in many stories from old. If there is land to inheirit then someone will but otherwise it isn't assured
In many stories, sure. The norm? No.
Most people who survived to old age had kids, and those kids lived with them and also had kids. Most households were multigenerational.
Multigenerational households were the norm until recently. The eldest son gradually took over the household and raised his family there, or something like that. Both because it would have been terrible waste to have an entire house for some old people, and because household chores were hard work before modern amenities.
It still happens.
The less wealthy the family, the more likely you'll see it.
So your aggressive taxes will hit those people - displacing additional generations, not just the land-owning-but-otherwise-fairly-poor retiree - before it will hit the stereotypical middle class boomer retiree.
Outside of CA's Prop-13 territory, the multi-generational shabby-old-home-owners pay less taxes currently than their richer neighbors who moved more recently and renovated or expanded. The land value of both is going up, but the improvement value is lower for the poorer family. So now you'll get rid of the improvement value and even it out for both, which will hit the poorer land owners the hardest.
But land is a scarce resource, at least desirable land. Blaming existing houses is exactly what you should do because instead of them you could build higher density.
There are plenty of houses for sale at any time. If building densely is the goal then any one of them can be used to build. Speculators buy houses in hopes that in the future the house next door will sell and then they can combine the lots to a larger building - where this is allowed.