• The Bard in GreenA
    17•6 months ago

    Here’s some ideas:

    • Put limits on the amount of residential property that can be owned by investors in a given market. Something like “In order for an investor to purchase a residential property within this particular municipality, no more than 40% of existing residential housing can be owned by investors, excepting where A) The investor in question is an individual or family who intend to reside in the property and share it with one or more roommates or B) the investor in question is an individual or family who are moving out of a unit they already own intending to purchase another one and convert the original home into a rental property.” Alternatively "No more than 20% of the housing market in the municipality may be owned by entities who’s majority ownership A) resides outside of the municipality or B) who’s ownership possesses a combined net worth in excess of $10,000,000 (automatically adjusting for inflation over time), excepting newly constructed properties intended for sale.

    • Reform property taxes to avoid squeezing out homeowners. I.E. Property taxes shall, in perpetuity, be assessed at the purchase price of the home when the current residents moved in. Meaning… If you’re a landlord, you don’t WANT your tenants to move out because then your property taxes will go up. Also “No insurance company may charge more for home owners or renters insurance than X percent of the current property tax rate.” And “No landlord shall charge more than X times the current property tax rate, where X is an adjustable number slightly higher than the current competitive market rate.”

    • Pin a carbon tax on retail or office businesses in a given area to scale with whatever commute they require for workers who live far away. Make it high enough to strong arm business owners into paying (and charging enough) that they save money on higher pay rates for employees so they can afford to live locally in affluent areas and areas undergoing gentrification. I’m totally OK with employers being like “We prefer to hire local (or localish) because of this tax” to a perspective employee. I’m OK with it being high enough for business owners to feel it, and with business owners screaming about it as much as they want. Affluent residents want to fucking shop locally and they WILL, even if that means local retail has to raise their prices. If it puts you out of business, good. Someone else will show up to take your place and will treat their employees better.

    Not that you would EVER see ANY of these ideas proposed in WSJ.