As long as housing is an investment, there has to be a housing crisis.

100% Agree

I’m not sure how banning landlords works though. Like everybody has to own their own house? What about apartment buildings or people living somewhere for the short-term? Or are you think like where the government is the landlord for everybody - sort of like Vienna?

When you say “doing the former” what specifically do mean?

Empirically, building more housing does lower the cost of rent. See Austin for an example. But yeah there is more that could be done for sure.

So the importantly, you would only pay tax on the value of the land your property is on, not the entirely of the property. Essentially, society owns the land and “rents” it to anybody who wants to use it for housing or a business, and that “rent” would belong to society, either as UBI or as funding for services.

So if your house is in a really rural area, the land isn’t worth that much, your LVT would likely be quite low. If your house is in a high demand area, like manhattan, the LVT is high, and you should probably build and apartment or something so lots of people can live there. If the land you want to use has a lot of valuable resources under it, it would be expensive, and you have to pay a lot for the right to use it. This is essentially what Norway and Alaska to get as much money as possible out of oil companies and give it to citizens.

So because other landlords will be trying to raise money to pay the land value tax, they will be more desperate for renters, and will offer a lower price. So if your landlord tried to raise the rent, you would have a lot of cheaper options to leave to. It would make landlords compete against each other.

See here for theory and empirics, including an example from Denmark

Sorry if I was unclear. It would happen continuously, over time. So like monthly or yearly, just like rent to a landlord.

You would only pay tax on the unimproved value of land. You pay no tax on everything built on it. So an empty 1-acre lot next to an apartment building providing 100 homes on a 1-acre lot would both pay the same taxes.

So landlords would earn a profit but they wouldn’t earn rent (in the neoclassical sense).

Its almost like anybody who wants exclusive access to land (for their housing or their business) has to pay society for the right to use it. And if a business (like an apartment) tried to pass on costs to customer (their renters) without providing more or better services, they are essentially just admitting their land got more valuable, so they would just pay more in land value tax (thereby providing more funding for UBI or public services)

There is a solution for landlords that we’ve known about for a long time.

And its doesn’t involve the a massive, powerful state controlling where people can live.

Its a 100% tax on the value of land. It would stop the landowning class from unfairly stealing huge amounts of money from the poor in the form of rent. It could fund the government (allowing us to decrease taxes that hurt labor, like an income tax), or be redistributed as UBI.

Seriously, if you are at all interested in potential solutions to the housing crises and wealth inequality, please, please, google Land Value Tax and Georgism.

100% tax on the value of land is the policy proposal. It makes economic sense, would let us abolish regressive taxes on labor and sales, would incentivize more abundant housing. Seriously. This is the solution.

How has no comment in this thread yet mentioned Georgism or Land Value Tax? That is the solution to Landlordism