A bit click-baity. But it got me thinking about the issue of vacant houses and solutions.
Baltimore has about 30,000 vacant properties, about of half which are vacant homes. There will still be stretches of blocks and blocks where maybe one house is occupied, if any. It's a sight that's heartbreaking, ugly, sad, and dangerous all in one. They're vacant houses, so why not simply demolish them? This has proven inordinately difficult. This episode of Planet Money discussed the yearslong process to demolish a 17-house city block, only one of which was occupied and thus needed a resident to relocate (an important hurdle since the city has to relocate based on a set of criteria, not just find another place that's charging similar rent). It cost $700,000. That's something like $600 million to demolish the vacant houses in Baltimore. Ain't gonna happen. Baltimore city schools are firing something like a thousand teachers to close a $130 million budget gap.
So what about taxing the owners? Baltimore already has insanely high property taxes, but what about a penalty to the owner if the house is vacant for a prolonged amount of time?
That's a brilliant thought. Do you think these squatters laws should coexist with laws that tax the owners of these vacant properties?
If history serves as an example, quite a few. But the unintended consequences would matter a lot on the specifics of the program. Are you saying this because you think the unintended consequences would or ought to disqualify the tax hike in this situation?
I know a guy who works on the Portland Development Commission. He hates it. He bitches that the first priority of the commission should be to increase housing stock but that so many different interest and goals are in play that the web of fees, regulations, zoning and incentives makes increasing housing stock incredibly hard. He's a pretty conservative guy I ran this by him. It sounded fantastic to him. He thought it provided powerful incentives with a relatively simple mechanism that would probably make a real difference in housing stock. Sure there would be losers but at least those losers would be people who could afford to have an extra house sitting around.
what do you mean by "increase housing stock"? create a supply of housing to meet demand for housing? i don't know much about the parisian housing situation but i really doubt more people is what paris needs. i also doubt that the sorts of houses owned by people who do not live in them will meaningfully increase the "housing stock" for the sorts of people who are trying to find a home. meanwhile, two-house owners, which is to say the rich and maybe a few businessmen who work parttime in paris, will move to strasbourg. great.
I know a guy who just found out he pays his father $1 rent each a year on six houses that he owns for tax purposes. He thinks they are all habitable properties that could be lived in. Shrug. Even if they just let a caretaker live in the house rent free to get out the 60% it's a win. If they plow the 60% into affordable housing at the expense of those who are sitting on unused housing it's a win.
If your guiding principle is "nuance in all things" then I would agree. Would you agree that a solution exists? If so, would you agree that enacting some solution might be better than arguing and disagreeing about how to solve the problem, and not doing anything?
There does become a point where the rent gets so low that the cost of repairs after a renter is higher than the rental income. Even then though vacant houses are a blight and make everything around them worse. Additionally they still use up city resources like roads water pipes and electrical lines so forcing houses to be occupied should really be a priority. If an owner cannot afford to demolish a blighted house then she should be forced to sell the houses so that someone who can will. If that means that the house is worth $1 then that's what it's worth. There should be zero incentive to hold houses vacant for speculative reasons. If people want to own investment properties to rent out that's great there is a need for that and everyone benefits but staking claim to a plot of land in the city and not using it should be strongly discouraged and those people should be encouraged to sell to someone that will use the property.
There should be an avenue to provide relief to those unduly burdened by the tax hikes. The specifics I don't know off the bat. I don't, for example, know what proportion of people who own these abandoned houses are still living, how many of the houses are owned by private individuals versus commercial entities, how many are a first investment home versus a 20th, etc. I'm also aware that a lot of people own these junk houses and keep them around as depreciating properties for income tax purposes. That just seems broken. Also, Baltimore, like a lot of American cities, has a huge homelessness problem.
This dovetails with everything I know about homelessness. What's worse is that I see super young kids taking to panhandling. Maybe at that point in their lives they're not suffering from mental illness per se (not going to get into what's lacking at home that compels a young kid to panhandle) but the life of homelessness is so rough that it surely precipitates terrible consequences for mental health, physical health, esteem, direction, etc. But homelessness is a distinct though tangentially related issue to vacant housing. They both indict a broken system, broken in ways that people argue about to this day. I'm not sure by which mechanism you refer to the real estate market being hurt by. Again, I don't think the solution to homelessness is giving away keys to empty houses (many of which in Baltimore are condemnable). Do you mean the real estate market would be hurt because no one wants to live near mentally ill people? Because mentally ill people don't take care of their property and so values go down?I thought I heard (though I can't remember where I heard it) that homelessness is mostly a matter of mental illness and drug addiction more than poverty.
Also, wouldn't giving away empty houses hurt the real estate market even more, leading to more unsellable, and soon-to-be-empty-in-the-future houses?
I think lack of market liquidity would be one problem. If you give houses to the homeless they can't afford maintenance and can't afford to sell and leave. This in turn result in house in said neighborhood degrading furtger and people with the means to fix them being unable to buy and fix because the current resident won't leave.I'm not sure by which mechanism you refer to the real estate market being hurt by. Again, I don't the solution to homelessness is giving away keys to empty houses (many of which in Baltimore are condemnable). Do you mean the real estate market would be hurt because no one wants to live near mentally ill people? Because mentally ill people don't take care of their property and so values go down?
These people have that opportunity right now. They just aren't taking advantage. Detroit currently has programs to sell houses for $1 if someone promises to move in and pay a pittance in taxes for a few years before reselling. Baltimore has done this in the past, its current iteration of the program being a "Vacants to Value" subsidy. They want for these people the means to fix them.and people with the means to fix them being unable to buy and fix because the current resident won't leave.
In my highly sleep deprived state this morning it occurred to me that one reason such programs are not super effective is because there is not enough initial momentum. I won't want to put effort into a blighted house if it was the only house being remodeled on the block but if I knew that the entire block was sold to people doing the same thing that would be a big difference. The city should run the sales like a kick starter where everyone needs to put 10-20k into a remodel account but the transaction doesn't occur till all the houses on the block are sold. Additionally the permits need to be streamlined to only the bare essentials, if that means going back to 1970-1980 building code then so be it. 80s construction was safe enough
Coordination is surely an issue. No one wants to make the first move because it's so risky. But surely the goal is dense, vibrant, dynamic neighborhoods. Being the first to move into a neighborhood or city that's blighted or vacant means a several year to lifelong commitment. That's a huge investment for an unassured thing. But one would have to conclude that it's absolutely necessary. That's why I light up at new experiments like these. Create some data. Start a discussion. Unfortunately, I know nothing about city building codes and what stands in the way as especially onerous regulation, so I can't speak to your point about construction in the 80s. That does sound like just a convenient cutoff point--as far back as we can go before we start insulating with asbestos. The 1980s don't strike me as an especially innovative time RE construction, but again, not my area of expertise.
I think in many places voters would vote against that sort of plan because many see low income families as a blight on their neighborhood. The againt campaign would only need to paint low income people as stereotypical overweight family with 6 kids ananoned cars in the yard and drugs problems and people will choose no neighbors to low income now neighbors