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There's a quiet housing fix spreading across California (www.sfgate.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/california@lemmy.world
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TLDR: Cities are allowing developers to re-zone retail units that go un-leased. They can then be converted into live-work studios so people can run businesses from home ie. an artist running a home studio, a massage therapist taking clients, a home daycare, etc. Seems this could really help with California’s chronic housing crisis.

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[–] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

There is actually a super simple solution to this: Have the government buy up a ton of properties and then rent them out to people at reasonable rates. A little bit of it is enough to pierce the bubble and bring rents down, and it generates revenue for the government, and people start investing in productive businesses instead of in properties. Literally everyone on all sides wins, except your landlord.

We could have been working on that, but it turned out it was super important for Hilary to win the primary, and so what the fuck here we are.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Complex economies rarely have "super simple solutions" without pitfalls, but I get where you're going with this.

    The hardest part with implementing any solutions like this is that they require breaking down the existing systems. This will always be aggressively fought by the rich and powerful who benefit from the status quo, usually by flooding the media with straw-man misrepresentations of the solution to turn the public against it.

    Your solution would likely require the government seizing large plots of land from private citizens/companies. This could easily be re-framed as a "The government is stealing your land" bill.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    This will always be aggressively fought by the rich and powerful who benefit from the status quo, usually by flooding the media with straw-man misrepresentations of the solution to turn the public against it.

    Yeah, pretty much.

    Your solution would likely require the government seizing large plots of land from private citizens/companies.

    Hm? No. You just buy it. The US government under Biden spend about a trillion dollars on the IRA with all its various programs, without even needing to just blindly put it all on the government's credit card as Trump is doing for all this nonsense. But there's plenty of money.

    When they did this exact system in England, a lot of landlords proactively started selling their stuff to the government, because rents were so low that they'd rather just have the money instead, to do something else with it. That's one of the advantages of this approach is that you don't have to coerce anybody or illegalize anything in order for it to work, the government just enters the marketplace and uses its money influence to fix things by playing by the marketplace rules.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    And why would they sell an appreciating, revenue generating asset to the government unless they were forced?

    And if they were forced to sell, there's your media spin.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I live in a building that's been sold three times so far. You are aware people sell real estate sometimes?

    This whole thread is a pretty weird conversation lol

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I live in a building that's been sold three times so far. You are aware people sell real estate sometimes?

    Obviously, but they are likely taking that money to invest in more profitable real-estate elsewhere. The ultimate goal here is to reduce the consolidation on the ownership of real-estate, meaning these investors will ultimately lose value. Morally, they could and should abdicate, but since when has that motivated the wealthy?

    The mechanisms do exist for your suggestion, and some owners would actually be okay with it, but I would still expect a lot of opposition.

    Look into the history of eminent domain too see (historically) just how receptive land owners have been to selling their land to the government.

    All this is basically just to illustrate my original point:

    Complex economies rarely have "super simple solutions" without pitfalls

    I don't think that's a reason for inaction, but it does explain why real change is so hard to actually implement at scale.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Look into the history of eminent domain too see (historically) just how receptive land owners have been to selling their land to the government.

    I've been on a jury for an eminent domain case, I am familiar. Usually that's when the government needs a specific piece of property instead of just wants to buy some kind of property in general.

    England has done this, and it's worked. I'm done speaking with you about this. Have a good weekend.

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