Quote from @Marcus Lane:
You missed what is really happening that is working to suppress affordable housing and is contributing to the demand for affordable housing.
Institutional investors are adults playing kickball with the kids. Since 2007 and 008 when the government let off the hook the shysters who reminded us what the great depression look like and who allowed tens of thousands of houses to be transferred to "new owners", you know the same guys switched their suits and popped up with hedge funds and became venture capitalists. They brought those non performing notes, they foreclosed and versus putting those houses out to sale they became landlords. Now re-capitalized and with new haircuts along with their new suits they were perfectly positioned for covid. Preventing regular landlords from being successful has played into the hands of these institutional investors and now they are picking over the bones of all housing nationwide. With massive buying power, a slow down in developments and new construction from higher across the board cost and poof high cost and high demand ruining affordability across the country. In desirable areas across the country rents are at all time highs. In most cases paying rent is comparable to paying a mortgage. The coastal cities all have historical high rents. Now we are seeing institutions foreclosing on landlords who were unable to weather the covid moratorium. Rolling back planning and zoning policy to allow more occupants in existing or newly constructed housing isn't a viable long term option.
My suggestion is local based. Break the institutional investors and attempt to affect their bottom line. It's easy enough to track those large investors. What is needed is policy that doesn't lump all landlords together and hurt mom and pop and regional landlords. It's the big boys that are creating the havoc. City ordinances are a tool that can pin point these large investors and make them pay accordingly. For starters, cities can tax them commercially. Then tax them on the conveyance of the property when buying and selling. This process can be done in allotted time so that as normalcy returns the program can fade out. In this way your originate revenue that can be used as down payment assistance for first time homebuyers. Or if they sell a property (1-4 units) they can receive a rebate to incentivized these guys to sell. At the same time you can levy fair market rent by commercial owners. If they receive a designation as a institutional landlord then caps to rent year over year can be instituted. This can de-incentivize acquiring residential property for profit.
Take a state like Florida. Where rent has risen extremely, to the extent that Disney workers have to decide whether to eat or pay rent. Unless some action is taken we may be witnessing the east coast version of skid row in neighborhoods that previously were known as some of the most affordable housing in the nation. It's not much of a stretch to envision imminent disaster. What is clear if nothing else can be settled on is that unless action is taken affordable housing issues will be followed by crime, poverty and entrenched violence. That's a fact
You're kidding, right? You're advocating to treat property owners differently depending on some subjective notion of whether they are"mom and pop" vs "institutional"? Basically what you are proposing is to un-level the playing field because of some notion of "fairness", where you define "fairness" as "me good, corporations evil"
Sounds a lot like so many do-gooder mentality, ill-conceived band-aid ******** that ends up creating more problems than the intended fix.
More govt interference is going to screw up the market even more than it is now.
The only solution is more housing. And one significant way to make that happen is to get rid of many zoning regulations.
