And you all told me the blue maga border bill that Republicans rejected was 4d chess.
The country is far from full. We have cities in a few states that dwarf the population of entire other states.
The cost of living crisis is manufactured. And we as a society could choose to end it tomorrow.
Agreed, but adding to demand without relieving supply does us no favors. If we banned Air BNB and corporate landlords of single family homes, this problem would be gone tomorrow, but that’s not going to happen.
Reducing demand does no favors either because the cost of living is artificial. Demand is irrelevant.
I mean, it’s definitely still relevant. If everyone just said fuck it n moved into Hooverviles tomorrow, cost of housing would go down with no one to occupy/ pay for the housing. They are restricting supply. The only way to combat it beyond asking for legislators to actually do their fucking job is to decrease demand.
a vacancy tax would fix seattle overnight, I stayed at a hotel there recently and most the nearby buildings were over 50% just empty rooms. Theres no reason to justify these kinds of rents except price fixing.
100%. A friend of mine lives in a “luxury apartment” and at night, most of the lights are off, I never see other people in the hallway, and I can almost guarantee it is 30-50 % occupied. They don’t care though, they would rather have it be 30% occupied at the higher price than 100% occupied at what the true market rate is.
We could even leave those things untouched. And simply build desirable, affordable public housing like Austria. In areas where it’s feasible have Finland style district heating.
That would cause the collapse of said corporate land barons and ridiculous Air BNB BS. We won’t do it however. Because there’s no short term profits in it for said land barons. And it would reduce how much they’re able to overcharge impacting their profits long and short term.
