Comment by pydry
19 hours ago
Im very pro building more homes as well but to call it quick OR easy is wrongheaded.
An LVT is an excellent stopgap and a way to incentivize the creation of higher density housing where it is needed.
19 hours ago
Im very pro building more homes as well but to call it quick OR easy is wrongheaded.
An LVT is an excellent stopgap and a way to incentivize the creation of higher density housing where it is needed.
How would LVT be easier or quicker? In what states are you going to be able to campaign on this?
"Change commercial and industrial under-utilized areas to allow residential, then aggressively subsidize developers or build directly there" sounds much easier to me than "pass a property tax increase that people will fight tooth and nail." Your LVT is gonna need to come with zoning changes too, after all.
California has Prop 13. Texas lowered property taxes recently. Florida is considering property tax rebates. You're gonna have a hard time convincing people to increase property taxes when housing is expensive already. Big overlap between "property owners" and "highly motivated voters" already.
Incentivizing density in single-family areas is quite hard, I'm not convinced it would do much even if it passed! Even in CA where neighborhoods can now have ADUs, sales prices for 5bd big-as-box-as-possible single family units are generally higher than prices for 3bd or 4bd + an ADU properties with separate units. Because the people who can afford those would rather have a giant-ass house than be a small-time landlord on the side. So maybe you just displace the old retirees and a bunch of high-income DINKS move from their condos to those SFHs. Sales price goes down a bit to compensate for the now-higher tax burden; remains unreachable for many but reachable enough for enough that it doesn't spur massive change.