SV reX said:
I spent 10 years as a full time volunteer for Habitat for Humanity building hundreds of houses for low income homeowners. Though our mission was to "eliminate poverty housing worldwide", we also had to recognize we were a HOME OWNERSHIP program, and some people are simply not ready to be home owners.
Decent housing may be considered at times a human right. Home ownership is not.
I just don't get this.
I don't think everyone should be a homeowner. I just think housing should be affordable relative to local employment market. I think people should be able to do more than just simple pay for rent, transportation, and food, and never have any ability to save, even if they were scrounging. There will always be working poor. There will always be a lot of folks at the bottom of the business, some folks in the middle, and a few at the top.
If you support the idea of housing as a valuable part of civilized society, then why do we force the cost of housing the working poor onto the populace as a whole? Especially while those investors are trying their best to avoid paying taxes that will house the people they've made homeless by reducing wages and increasing rents?
I propose a system that removes the profiteering land holding and speculation, as well as vacancy as means of speculation. You can still make money owning rentals. You can still make money building houses. I'm not anti-landlord or anti-developer. Why? because those folks create housing, which we need more of. But we need enough of it that there is competition, and letting stuff sit vacant because you can ride land appreciation doesn't help.
You can't create more land, so there will always be a profit motive to buying land where it's needed most, holding it, and reselling it with the hopes of making a profit. But that doesn't jive with an anti-tax political climate, the distaste of voting population to compete against government as a landholder, historical problems with "projects" and providing income to the least of us.
Also ironic is that Habitat for Humanity often fights against higher property taxes because its new builds get taxed higher than their surrounding properties. They advocate for homestead exemptions - ie, not paying taxes on the owner-occupied primary residence (which I support), as well tax exempt status to the organization itself to hold land without getting taxed for it (which I dont).
So instead of having a system that removse speculative investment from real estate, we're just banking on charities getting tax exempt status.
What does that do for the millions who rent?