"Housing" Proposals

Of course there's the best option which is an non-occupancy tax that goes up exponentially for each additional property you're sitting on for speculation.

That right there would be a hard counter to wallstreet hoovering in the housing market.

It's like you're not even considering the feelings of the millionaires and billionaires with 72 houses each and I for one just won't stand for it.
- I can't wait for the "rational" peoples argument against taxing the rich. Will it be something like a slippery slope fallacy? Maybe it will be "it's unfair to thoses that only just recently got rich." I'm thinking though they will go with, "it's not going to make a meaningful difference" then try and sell us trickle down in some new way.

"Kill 3 kids and bulldoze the neighboring nature reserve (it won't give us more chairs, but it'll feel good)"

its called a nature reserve because its a piece of nature thats reserved to be used as a golf course in the future

Neither choice is great. One is evil.

That 25k quickly becomes "oh, everyone had 25k more so we can charge 25k more".

Don't give rich house builders tax breaks, they're the ones causing the problem by deliberately not building enough. You're the fucking government. Build houses yourselves. Rent them through social housing programs.

dont allow corporations and billionaires to buy thousands of flats
- Yeah, that too.
  The precious "free markets" have had their crack at it, and have shown that they're not to be trusted to either own or build them. Prices have soared and that's 100% intentional on their part.
25k is for first time home buyers, not everyone. You can't have separate prices for first time buyers and the rest of the public, and a seller won't know how you are financed until after the house is listed anyways.
This absolutely will help, because if you'd just ask anyone trying to get a home, the down payment is the hardest part to satisfy.
The only way a house cartel can form like this is for those that own the homes. The builders don't own the homes, corporations do. Those corporations collude and price fix to create a cartel. Focus on that.
- The UK had a similar scheme for first time buyers and it's often cited by economists as one of the biggest things fueling their housing crisis.
The builders have made the 16 million empty homes in this country because they were just selling them to corporations. It's not that they are not hiding enough, it's that the rich have engulfed the entire pipe with their gluttonous mouths and there is nothing left for the rest of us.
When will we finally slay the beasts that are killing us?
I've started to come around on the 25k down payment assistance. It definitely has it's problems, and there will absolutely be those who gouge because of it. But because it's specifically down-payment assistance it will still help first time buyers get mortgages on houses they can afford the regular payments on, but don't have the extra to set aside for a 10% down payment because rent is taking everything they could be setting aside for a down payment. And it's limited to first time home buyers, with 2 years of on-time rent payments, and says "up to" 25k. Wouldn't surprise me if it ends up being limited to 10% of the purchase price (which gets you more favorable loan terms).
It's not that they aren't building enough. It's that they are building big luxury homes because there is a bigger profit margin than making affordable homes.
Most builders are already fully booked for work. The one's that could work faster generally aren't the ones you want building your house.

thinking that homeless illegal immigrants are the root cause of home shortage where a single corporation or a billionaire buys thousands of flats to rent them to people for exorbitant prices.

in one way it works because if you kick out many homeless people out of the country, you can say that in one year you cut homelessness by half.

Thats currently already done with jail. The main problem is homeless people don't pay their jail bills. In my state 15 years ago it was 30$ per day you had to pay to be incarcerated in jail, not prison.
- Okay america is sounding more and more like a joke. You have to pay to be in a processing facility? When you have no choice. And you’ll be incarcerated there during trial so before you are proven guilty of anything.

Quick reminder: The Nazi German government emptied out Eastern European towns and villages taken by the Wehrmacht during various campaigns, most notably Operation Barbarossa, for resettlement of "pure" Germans to those occupied lands (called Lebensraum)... this started almost literally once these occupied towns and villages were far enough from the front lines. Also, the whole point of the US Government's genocidal forced march of native tribes, often referred to as the Tail of Tears, was to clear said native tribes out so the Southern aristocracy could seize the land for plantations worked by chattel slaves... whole swaths of what is today Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were settled by whites as a result.

Many a "populist" (read: Fascist or proto-Fascist) operate their politics in this manner. Promise either cheap land (or, at the very least, housing) to the workers and others by committing what is, on it's face, a genocide. There's more modern examples (two in particular, going on right this minute for all the world to see), but I don't want to get the ban-hammer so I won't name them directly (I forgot to check the instance in which I am commenting before doing so, but not taking my chances).

Additionally, "Mass deportation" is a fucking genocide, I don't know how this can even be said loudly. Guess people never learn...

Donald John Trump comes from a family of real estate speculators.

Akira Toriyama once said he based the character of Freeza on Japanese real estate speculators, who he called "the worst kind of people." (Source)

Am I saying Trump is Freeza? No, Freeza is several orders of magnitude more competent on his worst day than Trump was when he peaked in 1951. But I think it's important to underline, for the people in the back, what level of cartoonish evil we're dealing with, because for some reason people will read stuff like this and it won't sink in. Maybe DBZ will help.

I don't know. I'm tired, y'all.

https://clearinghouse.net/case/15342/
He was found by a court of law to be a racist slumlord.

So the mass deportation would be of lawful alien residents, because undocumented residents cannot buy houses unless it is straight up cash, and even then would have a hard time getting insurance or utilities, you know, without a SSN, credit history or IDs. Unless they use a stolen SSN, which is very difficult and rare.

Nope! Everyone knows undocumented immigrants are buying ALL the houses, they're taking ALL the jobs, and getting ALL the public benefits (except for the benefits welfare queens get), they're bringing in and doing ALL the drugs, they're committing ALL the crime, and they're voting in ALL elections. It's true, I saw it on the TV. They're busy, I don't know how they have the time to do all of that.
You know, it seems kind of ridiculous when typing it all out like that. Were the TV people lying to me? Can't be; now excuse me, I'm going to tell my employees to keep working after clocking out and use the savings to buy several blocks of housing and rent them out at high rates. Their poor time management is not my problem.

Immigrants own Chase Manhattan?!!?!

Damn, lern somethin' new errday ...

If they really wanted to change regulations they'd push changing zoning regulations in cities to allow building anything other than detached single family housing. That would be totally reasonable and help alongside tax incentives. But I have a feeling that's not what's meant by changing regulations...

They said “making federal land available”. I take that as they want to sell off land in places like national parks to be developed.
Which, needless to say, is an awful idea.
I thinks that's one of those state's rights things where federal government can't just tell a town how to zone it's own land unless they're taking it away from the town like for a national Park or something.
- It's actually an instance of super small government. Those regulations are dictated by city's and counties not by states
The american dream isnt raising a family in an apartment, and a lot of people were raised on that dream.
We need to change the perception of condensed housing I think before there is support for that.
- The best way to change perception of mixed use residential areas is having people live there.
  The bigger issue is that these buildings don't work by themselves. The biggest issue with suburbia is car dependency, which can only be countered by walkable cities and public transport (both of which require higher population densities)
- Before you can start to change public perception it needs to be legal to build densely. Parking minimums and a variety of other commercial building code regulations make this much more expensive in the US, all while the people nearby in single family homes fight any new builds due to their poor perception of condos and apartments. Just removing the stigma is only one part of the equation.
- My perception of dense housing is smelling cigarettes and weed and hearing fighting, dogs barking, loud exhaust, and loud bass for hours on end.
  I think we change the perception by enforcing rules to keep people from disturbing others peace at home. Make it a reality that dense housing isn’t a worse experience. That isn’t currently the case.
  I’d be much more apt to go back to dense housing if I was confident that my complaints would be heard and actioned up to and including evicting the offenders (after many complaints and no corrective actions taken). But I have never heard of such a place.

I hate any financial assistance that doesn't address the root cause, because all it is at that point is more tax and wealth transfer to the rich.

That's the feature of these issues, there is no incentive for people "fixing" them to end the grift.

I'm curious how many houses/apartments are unused in the US, acting as a speculative asset and if building more is even necessary.

Building more is necessary if the available housing is not located where appropriate employment is located. Thus, the gross number of available homes isn't a good metric to use for determining the actual need for new construction.
If enough more houses are built that prices stop increasing faster than inflation, housing will no longer be valuable as a speculative asset. Building more houses BOTH makes housing immediately available, and changes the market forces in a way that pushes out investors squatting on un-lived-in units.

The worst idea is ever giving down payment assistance. Government subsidizing actual builders, sure, but free money to property owners just increases the price to meet supply and demand and goes right into their pocket. It actually increases home prices. Extremely stupid.

This is just to first time home buyers, not to anyone buying a house
Of the four ideas that are listed on this picture that's the one you gonna go with for being the worst?
Don't know that it would be sufficient, but it's not free money to all property owners, just those that haven't yet been able to get to home ownership, but have been renting consistently for a couple of years.
So if in a normal market, a new homebuyer has a budget that's about $15k less than some speculative asshat looking for an investment rather than a home, then this tips the scales in favor of that would-be new homebuyer.
There needs to be some sort of tipping the scale in favor of people seeking to own their own primary residence versus those that already have their primary residence and ideally disincentivize those looking to acquire property they have no interest in using themselves.
- When I say free money to the owners, I mean the primary effect on the market is only to increase the price, giving more money to sellers and more equity to owners. Without a significant increase in supply, it won't help much and giving 25k for single family homes would be counterproductive in general in my opinion. You want to fuck speculators and parasitic landlords, you do it by increasing supply. That can include a focused effort on high density and mixed use housing that the 25k doesn't help with.
- Nah, using tax dollars to increase property values in a housing crisis is counterproductive as fuck. It increases rents for everyone else as well. Better off attacking it from the supply side with a massive subsidized housing effort and just tanking the market. But that's politically toxic.
I'm all for it of they include vacant land.. I wouldn't mind having acreage, and getting one of them unfinished Amazon houses.

I have one "weird" and "radical" proposal: public housing to rent. Not to but. At affordable price. That would lower the price of every house, flat, ...

Those who live in apartments, and only they, should collectively and equitably own the building entirely.
- Put the squeeze on the landlord and then collectively make a low-ball offer.
In the SF Bay Area, it costs over $1 million just to build one "affordable" housing unit.
- Good thing the fucking country is bigger than the SF bay area then, isn't it?
- It's sold at that price. I'm sure it doesn't cost that much.

They ban abortion and then don't want those babies/future adults housed. Classic.

Because being poor, uneducated, and unloved with a chip on your shoulder makes you a likely Republican voter. I would bet the whole farm that unwanted children are far more likely to grow up to vote Republican, and I think that's one of the primary reasons they fight against abortion, and any other policies that increase education and security for children.

The only thing proposed that's reasonable is "changing regulation." It's too easy to block new housing, and often times it's just flat out illegal to increase density or build mixed use.

But those regulations are largely controlled by local governments, not the federal government. Federal regulations can prevent building new housing in certain areas and conditions (like destroying habitat of an endangered species), but that is much rarer than a city council not approving projects or zoning changes because they want to keep property values high.
It depends on which regulations. The second part of that “making federal land available” makes me think they want to develop national parks.

The US has a population density of 33 people km2, But "Massss deportation!"

Yeah. If you've ever been to Wyoming, you know that the country is not even close to overcrowded.

Public Housing broski. Take a look at Vienna for example.

We have that. It's a little complicated in ways that Vienna probably doesn't have.
- Yes but the real difference is the scale. Approx half of housing in Vienna is publicy owned. This means rent becomes affordable for most as prices depreciate. And it costs the government suprisingly little, saving a lot on crime, homelessness etc etc. Another big part of the market is tightly rent controlled. So you only have maybe 20% of housing that is in similar market conditions to 97% of US housing.
- I recently moved to Vienna and don't qualify for the public housing (you need to have lived here for a certain amount of time)but the sheer amount of it (and relative quality) means that even in the private market, competition is much less.
  Compared to other cities we have lived in, the rent is much lower and the quality much higher.
  Something like 60% of the population lives in either public or subsidized housing!

Down payment assistance is just going to drive prices up.

It's the perfect solution for the democrats because it sounds good but also won't actually cause housing prices to go down, so homeowners won't feel like they are 'losing' money.

But both parties are the same? Right? RIGHT?!

Trump's sucks, but just giving people money will make all of the housing $25000 more expensive on average over time. There are so many better things to do with that money, like better public transportation and schools. She just wants to throw it down a hole and make housing more expensive, in exchange for some short-term support.

It’s assistance not giving. I think it’s just a fund you can borrow from to get enough to start a mortgage.
It would also only apply to people who can’t afford the mortgage.
So it’s not going to impact house prices in the sense you say it would. Except slightly increasing demand to buy and thereby decreasing demand to rent.
- It'll make the bottom of the market more expensive.
- In the UK a similar scheme just led to the entry-level segment of the real-estate market inflating faster than the rest.
  It also led to a rise in more 'luxury' entry-level properties being built.
  Again, it's not exactly the same concept, but in the case of the UK, most economists agree that most buyers actually would have been better off if the policy had never been introduced, since the price rises ended up outpacing the value of the assistance.

Dems: Loan money to the poor, give money to the rich

Republicans: mass deport legal residents (this one is much more morally balanced (lol you're retarded))

I'd say the middle ground of learning from your mistakes and focussing on having less children in the future is perhaps something to consider.

In the meantime you should get enough chairs.

Kill 10 kids, sell 7 chairs

"destroy nature and ruins lives" vs "destroy nature, increase stock value, build three luxury chairs that no one is allowed to live in."

Is this more projection from the right? The idea of 'luxury chairs that no one is allowed to live in' very comfortably includes golf courses and expensive hotels. I haven't seen either of these things with Kamalas name plastered on the side. Trump makes this a part of his core identity. Figure it out.
- Nice straw man, I was talking about dem nimbys refusing to tear down pointless low density housing, remove sfh zoning, and refuse to introduce regulations preventing mcmansions developers from receiving the funds like the ones being proposed as they always seem to be the ones to actually get federal funding.
  California's housing crisis is exclusively because of dem plans like Harris' that refuse to address the elephant of old white nimbys refusing to give up their wastes of space.

I don't know how it is in the USA but here in France we kinda have the following issues:

People leave the countryside and small cities en masse
Houses rot empty anywhere that's more than a commute away from a big city
There's a huge shortage of housing in the cities

We need people coming back to the countryside and small cities but all the employment is bundled away in big cities...

WFH, better communications, give benefits to anyone opening business in a small town, ...
- And financial support for non chain shops. We need a small locally owned economy too.
  Also we used to have a very dense train network that we let rot because iT wAsN't PrOfItAbLe (and then we spent hundred of millions on roads ajd highways of course)
I'm here in Georgia, USA. The small towns in my state, those well outside the major metro suburbs, are either emptying out OR the state is bringing in non-union factory and data center jobs to dominate the local economy with the promise of jobs and economic revitalization. These companies are given huge tax incentives to build (or relocate) and thus contribute nothing to local coffers directly (necessitating higher property and sales taxes on locals). Currently, there's a car plant being built near where I live. The locals in the rural areas were shocked to find out after construction began that their water wells might stop working as the factory and it's subsequent suppliers setting up in the area will be draining the county dry... the state said they could. They're out of pocket to drill deeper wells and the state doesn't care... at the state level, they've actually made it harder (legally through environmental review) for local municipalities to direct the development of water infrastructure but easier for private developers (who have fewer reviews to go through) to just build whatever water infrastructure they see fit. Meanwhile, back in town, a handful of out of state multibillion dollar corporations are buying up any and all real estate that isn't nailed down and renting it back to us at exorbitant prices.
it's sorta like that but with way more opioid deaths
edit: and instead of rotting empty, megacorporations buy the empty homes and turn them into airBnBs to keep the house prices high. maybe that happens in france too?
- Airbnb seems to be more of an issue in cities than here.

I feel like at the point you phrase what you're going to do as "mass" anything you're doing something wrong.

Can't think of a single sentence that starts with mass that ends well

Wouldn't you want 5 more chairs, so the parents could sit too?

I still can't get over the other lack of journalistic integrity for CBS to put that up there. To concede that point. Like it's a fact. Utter bollocks.

Post-2016 Journalistic Integrity is a cruel joke.
With some few, rare, exceptions.

This meme is extremely naive. For many American voters, the primary residence is their one major investment -- and will severely punish any elected official that reduces housing prices. The result is neither party will do much on this issue.

My assessed house value being high only makes my property tax burden higher.
I'm not particularly eager to use my residence as a financial instrument, I use it to live in, not just some asset.
Meanwhile, I'm worried about the next generation of my extended family finding somewhere to live without getting stuck on the rental treadmill. If my house value tanked 60% but now the folks currently struggling to own a house can find them, I'd be ecstatic.
- It's only going to get worse in the coming years as weather gets more extreme and entire towns and city's get swallowed up by the ocean.

sell the kids to purchase a tenth of a house

Broke: Kill three kids

Woke: Buy three chairs

Bespoke: Birth control 20 years ago