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Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

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Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#501
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are proposing to remove taxation on a bull market (property)? This would inflate prices even more, as investors make a run for nice tax-free properties. It doesn't make sense, sorry. You need to remove incentives to invest in property altogether . It's one of the worst and most unproductive markets, and not even a market in practice because everyone needs a home. My personal pope-emperor utopia would forbid compa…

Here's an idea. Make utility services scale with people density. Relax restrictions on how much they can profit off sqft. Single home dwellers are penalized with increased upkeep costs and higher density buildings are encouraged.

What? That's crap. Why should single home dwellers have to pay more for water and electricity and gas just because their house is bigger? Then you'll have apartment dwellers running the heat with the windows open.

Utilities should be paid per-use, just as it is now. People with bigger houses are naturally going to pay more because a bigger house usually needs more power/fuel for HVAC, unless their house is more efficient. Also, we need to incentivize making homes more energy-efficient, and regressive policies like yours discourage efficiency. Smaller isn't always better; crappy old small houses and apartments can easily use far more energy than new McMansions.

And that leads me to one big problem in the rental market is that landlords never spend a dime on improving or renovating homes for better energy-efficiency, because the tenant has to pay all the utilities.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#502
post #399
post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse in Australia, which most properties do not have a yearly property tax. So you pay a 'stamp duty' when you purchase the property, based on a % of the sale price. This means you have people living in Sydney with multi-million dollar properties - which are just modest houses in now-desirable suburbs - who haven't paid any property tax since the 60's, and who can't move anywhere because they'd be up for s…

Its the exact same thing here in Vancouver, there are even protests because someone is going to tear down a small house that fits one family and build a bigger house on the same property that fits multiple families. We have a low interest rate fuelled asset bubble and 1%'ers are complaining that they can't afford detached housing in Vancouver, never realizing that if everyone in Vancouver live in detached housing we'…

>The other thing is that Vancouver isn't really a 'city' in the way that many others are, the 'burbs are separate cities so we get this 'most unaffordable' label when its really much better than many other cities.

What are you comparing to? Here in the US, it's exactly the same. Every single "big city" is really a metro area with a core city that bears the famous name, and a slew of separate cities bordering it. "Phoenix" for instance is a collection of a bunch of cities: Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Glendale, Scottsdale, Gilbert, Paradise Valley, Sun City, Peoria, etc. "Los Angeles" has more cities than I can count. "New York City" is a little more centralized (since the city annexed a bunch of the bordering cities back in the late 1800s, turning them into "boroughs"), but still has White Plains, Tarrytown, and cities in bordering states like Stamford, Jersey City, Newark, Bayonne, etc.

Maybe European cities are singular like that, but not here in the US.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#503

One of the main reasons of the housing crisis in the Bay Area is Prop 13 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197... ) Prop 13 basically keeps the property taxes constant (or 1% increase) as the value of your house increases (doubles or triples). Your tax gets re-calculated only if you sell your house and the new owner starts paying potentially multiples of what the previous owner has been payin…

Those house owning elderly you're feeling sorry benefitted from the biggest bull market it history. They may have saw 100x gains on their house while many youth will are spending 30-50% of their income on housing if they're lucky to get a good job. If they do, they can look forward to paying entitlements to these elderly people while they themselves may never see the same turn done to them because the system will be…

An expensive house doesn't make you richer unless you're selling it and live somewhere cheaper. And in our society it's a given that predictability of costs is one of the benefits you get from buying a house.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure no one complained about this. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/burgundy-lion-oqlf-1.... Also, as soon as my friend's company who does most of her business to the States got to a certain amount of employees, they had their agents come in to switch out all of the keyboards and software into French, and advised to make internal emails communications in French as well.

From that article: >A spokesman for the OQLF said the letter is only for information purposes, and there are no penalties involved. The agency's goal, Jean-Pierre Le Blanc said, is to let business owners know that French-language versions of such promotional stickers exist. >"This is one of about 300 to 400 letters we sent this month to businesses," said Le Blanc. "It's not an investigation. It's not a complaint. It'…

EDIT - Removed Original Comment

You know what, I'm getting emotional on the Internet.

I'm going to stop arguing here. It's not productive, and there's nothing to prove.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it discourage long-time owners from selling, thereby limiting supply and raising prices?

In theory, yes. In practice, if you own a currently 4+ million dollar home built in the 50's, you are paying at least 15-20k on it anyway. Here's an example currently for sale: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Altos-Hills/27446-Black-Mounta... They are paying 18.2k. If it was reassessed today, they'd be paying 40-45k. If they do what most people who have lived in a home forever do, and are downsizing to something smalle…

Just a single data point, but my parents bought their single family home in sf in 1972. It's currently worth about $2M. They pay roughly 400/yr in taxes and as a result there is no incentive for them to ever leave.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an idea. Make utility services scale with people density. Relax restrictions on how much they can profit off sqft. Single home dwellers are penalized with increased upkeep costs and higher density buildings are encouraged.

What? That's crap. Why should single home dwellers have to pay more for water and electricity and gas just because their house is bigger? Then you'll have apartment dwellers running the heat with the windows open. Utilities should be paid per-use, just as it is now. People with bigger houses are naturally going to pay more because a bigger house usually needs more power/fuel for HVAC, unless their house is more effic…

Water and electricity and gas are generally less cost-efficient to provide to less-dense neighborhoods, as the length of wire & pipe (and maintenance overhead) needed to serve a given number of residences is significantly higher. This is likewise why electricity and phone service were not provided to rural areas until subsidized by the government by taxing urban dwellers.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#507
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a symptom of something else: the hyper-centralization of relevance and cultural center of gravity in only a few places. When I was younger (1990s), I don't remember it mattering so much where you were located. I've spoken to older people and they concur: they've all said that when they were young being in, say, Indianapolis or Toledo was not a big deal. Today, at least in the USA, there's a strong sense…

As far as I can see this is exactly what is happening. More powerful computers and communications are amplifying the power of individuals, and as a result making relationships even more important. And cities have always been the places of innovation and relationships. Just even more so now.

But it's not just cities. Philadelphia and Baltimore and Atlanta are big cities, but they aren't the right cities. It's a small number of them. It's not just urbanism, but also brand.

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insane. The people who don't work live close to the business districts collecting social security paid for by the people who do work who have to commute in from afar for the privilege. Then the people who don't work vote themselves favorable property tax rules so they don't have to pay their fair share of keeping up the city.

I disagree. If the housing costs shoot way up, why should those people suddenly pay more money? Did a real estate bubble suddenly make it more expensive to police the area? I don't think so. The city doesn't need more money, it needs to stick to its budget.

It's not about raising more money, it's about fairly apportioning the tax burden. Why should two homeowners with the same value of property pay different amounts of taxes just because one is old and has owned the house a long time?

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#509
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most countries dont have such high property taxes that the USA does. In London I paid $2500 a year in council tax and thought that was a lot of money, even though that was about 0.25%. Meanwhile NYC suburbs I'm now paying that every two months.

But I am sure you paid more in income taxes in London. Which policy do you prefer? In my opinion taxing wealth is always a better idea than taxing income..

Then you get people paying far more in taxes just because their neighborhood became popular.

If you want to tax idle wealthy people, it's simple: tax their investments. This means a stock transaction tax, since so much wealth is tied up in stocks. You can also tax additional real estate properties (i.e. no property tax for a primary residence, but tax vacation homes, rental houses, etc.).

Re: Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a single unimproved residence being anywhere in that neighborhood (even going all the way to 1978); examples are welcome.

Not accounting for inflation, it's not hard to believe: Median Home Values: Unadjusted 2000 1990 1980 1970 1960 1950 1940 California $211,500 $195,500 $84,500 $23,100 $15,100 $9,564 $3,527 The median alone is almost two orders of magnitude greater as of 2000, let alone 2016. I'm sure there is at least one bay-area home that has been untouched for 50 or 60 years that is now selling for well over a million. From: https…

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