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Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

theatlantic.com

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Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#251

Post by HWR_14 »

varispeed wrote: post #238
HWR_14 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not arguing that progressive taxation is bad - you're arguing that taxes are not progressive enough . The point behind progressive taxation is that the rich can pay more (both practically they have more money and they miss the money less). If you are concerned, advocate to move the brackets up. 0% to 40k, 10% 40-80k, up to 50% 200k+ (these numbers were done to make my straight line math example easier, I don't…

But the rich bypass income tax altogether. It does not apply to them.

The truly wealthy (e.g. Bezos) bypass income tax. The rich (e.g. surgeon making 400k/year) tend not to.

But the last line I wrote was addressing this issue. We should prevent the wealthy from bypassing income tax. That is a different issue from what the taxes will look like.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#252

Post by whimsicalism »

pdonis wrote: post #117
whimsicalism wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tudent loans and college prices, but worse. It's not worse if there is cost-sharing. And as I said above, > that is exactly what we want! A price signal to the market to build more housing to accommodate everyone who wants to live there including displaced communities! Inevitably, trying to keep displacement from happening is going to increase prices for newcomers. The question is whether we want to do that in a wa…

> A price signal to the market to build more housing And, as basic economics will tell you, sending such a signal to a market is a windfall for people that already own the underlying asset in that market--i.e., landlords. They get a windfall because they bought the asset when the market undervalued it (because the price signal was not being sent).

Sure, but if paired with dezoning, the loss due to the elimination of rent-seeking through constricted suply would likely be larger decrease for landlords than the increase from demand surge from the subsidy.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#253

Post by dragonwriter »

whimsicalism wrote: post #252
pdonis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A price signal to the market to build more housing And, as basic economics will tell you, sending such a signal to a market is a windfall for people that already own the underlying asset in that market--i.e., landlords. They get a windfall because they bought the asset when the market undervalued it (because the price signal was not being sent).

Sure, but if paired with dezoning, the loss due to the elimination of rent-seeking through constricted suply would likely be larger decrease for landlords than the increase from demand surge from the subsidy.

> Sure, but if paired with dezoning, the loss due to the elimination of rent-seeking through constricted suply would likely be larger decrease for landlords than the increase from demand surge from the subsidy.

Landlords benefit from dezoning; increased density increases the rent value realized per unit of land area, even if it might decrease it per unit of living area, even without subsidies (and the slumlords that go whole hog on density will make those islands of private communities that don’t even more valuable, so long as the crime and other unattractive effects of the former can be kept out of sight, out of mind, from the latter.

The people opposed to dezoning aren’t landlords, they are residents who prefer low density conditions.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#255

Post by airhead969 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #40
arcticbull wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause is way too little development relative to demand, orchestrated via zoning regulations. Wikipedia spells this out in detail for San Francisco [1]. > Since the 1960s, San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area have enacted strict zoning regulations. Among other restrictions, San Francisco does not allow buildings over 40 feet tall in most of the city, and has passed laws making it easier for neighbors to…

I think there is still a place for government action to help prevent historic populations of a community from getting displaced. But those programs should be implemented as subsidies , not price controls! The only reason we're so reliant on the latter is it is more easy politically to put the costs on suppliers and hope the electorate doesn't notice that you're actually exacerbating the problem.

Subsidies and not price controls or lowest cost junk housing unsuitable for livable communities.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#256

Post by airhead969 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #58
dragonwriter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But those programs should be implemented as subsidies, not price controls! Subsidies for historic populations without price controls would be a windfall for landlords, and an accelerant to runaway general unaffordability. You could probably split the difference with weaker rent controls and subsidies that make it look like stronger rent control from the renters side, which might mitigate the worst problems of eithe…

> Subsidies for historic populations without price controls would be a windfall for landlords How is it a windfall for landlords? If the rent prices are going up, they will be making the money regardless of whether the renter is paying for it or the government is paying for some of it. If your point is that a subsidy will shift demand and increase the price, that is exactly what we want! A price signal to the market…

Isn't it typically a windfall for richer people posing as poorer and clever poorer people for improved survival who can utilize or resell earmarked subsidies meant for extremely struggling people?

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#257

Post by airhead969 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #69
whimsicalism wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subsidies for historic populations without price controls would be a windfall for landlords How is it a windfall for landlords? If the rent prices are going up, they will be making the money regardless of whether the renter is paying for it or the government is paying for some of it. If your point is that a subsidy will shift demand and increase the price, that is exactly what we want! A price signal to the market…

> How is it a windfall for landlords? If the rent prices are going up, they will be making the money regardless of whether the renter is paying for it or the government is paying for some of it. Subsidies for a population that otherwise couldn’t afford it will accelerate the rate at which market price increases, especially since those subsidies will also increase as the market price does. It’s like student loans and…

IIRC, by modern economists that inflation doesn't work like that in the real world. Real estate is based primarily on desirability, the order-of-magnitudes of wealth influx, and comparables. Overall, housing prices are uninvolved in changing inflation, but mostly externally-caused inflation changes housing prices slightly.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#258

Post by airhead969 »

InvertedRhodium wrote: post #76
eptcyka wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its simple - tax landlordism out of viability.

How do people who can't afford to buy then survive? I'm in NZ and we've just seen laws introduced that makes being a landlord more expensive and unsurprisingly it's seen rental increases as a result.

I have no idea. It seems like, in the US with spotty social assistance, people aren't able to conduct typical investments and savings for retirement and spend much more at convenience businesses for life's essentials such that they become trapped in poverty / economic immobility.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#259

Post by dslkfjg »

rsj_hn wrote: post #220
Spooky23 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always. The program I described was really a way to transition folks into a sustainable lifestyle. Rents in this place are more than property values, so training to let working class people afford a home and rent the downstairs bring stability to the family and he neighborhood. Real estate is insane because we’re in an era where wealth is being shoveled into a few peoples hands, and we are literally printing mone…

I am not saying Habitat for Humanity (or any charity) is bad, nor am I trying to discourage anyone from giving to charity. I'm pointing out that what works in a small scale charity does not work for addressing social problems at scale, and in fact is often (more often than not) harmful when done at scale. This is because the specific things that charities are good at: giving stuff to small groups of people, is not re…

>> leveraged bets on asset prices at taxpayer expense

But doesn't the tax code distinguish between a house which houses its owner and one which doesn't? I don't think investment homes are treated tax-wise the same as normal homes. I am not aware of tax advantages being extended to investments just because those investments are houses, but maybe I am wrong?

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#260

Post by dslkfjg »

prostoalex wrote: post #154
don-code wrote: post #63

I didn't quite glean a thorough understanding of the model from the article. It sounds like it's: 1) Public funds provide capital to build a new dwelling; individuals move in at rates similar to market rent. 2) Rather than rents paying a landlord, rents act like principal payments on a personal mortgage - e.g. I own $10,000 worth of shares of the property after paying $1,000/mo for ten months. 3) Eventually, I own en…

The first half of the article lambasts the current conflicted interests of homeowners, who are obsessed about wealth-building through their property purchase and thus super-sensitive about increasing housing supply in their zip code. Boo wealth-minded howeowners! But few paragraphs below under his proposal those who choose to participate are awarded “the opportunity to begin generating wealth immediately, from the mi…

The chief wealth generating event that most home owners experience is when the deed is yours. Then you aren't paying the bank "rent" any longer and only have to worry about property taxes and maintainence. Then you have the start of intergenerational wealth and or a hard asset you can sell for example, old people selling homes and buying a smaller they're better able to manage.

Nt saying the article is not contradictory, maybe it is, just pointing out that "wealth" is a flexible concept.

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