2y ago

We shouldn’t tax buildings in a housing crisis

www.straight.com

In their current form, our property taxes discourage much-needed new housing—while doing little to deter those who are actively hoarding land and homes. We need an overhaul if we’re serious about housing affordability, and luckily, we don’t have to look far for the answer.

7 comments

- Shouldn’t tax new builds, but tax vacant, capital gains and land banking.
  Did you read the article? They're proposing a land value tax which would discourage exactly these things.
Oh bloody hell.
Look: if someone's bleating about high taxes, you know where it came from. This is classic "don't tax, don't spend" conservative bullshit.
Next people will be bleating about the high cost of fire support and road maintenance they're next paying directly out of pocket.
... or what the fuck did you think cities DO with the tax money you don't want to pay?
I like it when my water and power and sewer work, so kindly fuck off with your tax whinging and just pay your fair share.
- lol I'd encourage you to read the article before commenting. The authors are arguing for more taxation, but via land taxes instead of building.
  
  tl;dr: Investors buy land and leave it undeveloped to avoid taxes while they wait for prices to rise.
  tl;dr2: Rich people suck money out of the system, adding no value and making life more expensive for everyone else.
I'm a young(er) homeowner in Vancouver, It's a 70 year old house.
I suppose the city would do an averaging thing where they'd say people whose assessments are a 50/50 split between land and improvements will not have a change in their taxes. People whose assessments are mostly based on improvements will have their taxes slashed to near 0, people whose assessments are mostly land will have their taxes nearly double.
My assessment puts almost all the value on the land (95% land, 5% house). So I think we'd be in the nearly doubling group.
We would not sell our house if our taxes doubled. Would we convert our basement to a rental suite? No, probably still not. Would empty nesters? I hope so.
I think I'd support this proposal, but I will say it again, we have to stop paying anyone over the age of 55 to indefinitely postpone their property taxes.
We need to incentivize the construction of housing suitable for elderly empty nesters. So that they can move out of their dangerous houses, and into single level units that they can thrive in.
- I appreciate your support despite the negative effects it would have on you.
  We need more density and it's not going to come fast enough if sitting on prime land is cheap.

7 comments