You don't need to confiscate anything. We have an abundance of housing stock (nationwide, many more existing homes than families to fill them). If you make it impossible to be a private landlord then these properties will decrease in value until most citizens can afford to buy a house. Public housing will only be necessary for a small percentage of outliers. New housing will be built to be sold at a modest profit and replace decaying stock, just as it is now. The only difference is owners will not be able to sit on the pot collecting rents from derelict buildings while they wait to optimize their redevelopment in a peak market.

Using the law to destroy the value of someone’s asset until they abandon it is confiscation, just indirectly.

Sorry, it might be rude, it might be unfortunate for existing landlords, it might even be a terrible idea, but I don't see how you can call it "confiscation". If the defacto situation is maintained ownership until a decision is made to sell that is not confiscation.

If the city builds a trash transfer center right next to my house causing my property value to plummet I might be upset, but nothing has been confiscated from me because I do not own "the character of the neighborhood" except in some small collective part.

What term do you propose? I agree confiscation is imprecise, but I can’t think of another word that means an intentional act by a government to deprive a citizen of their property, or the value of their property.

Perhaps "devaluation"?

Confiscation, it is not, anymore than negative reports are confiscation of stock. You can liquidate and acquire a different asset. Personal preference has rarely been rewarded (re: eminent domain). There are windows of opportunity, timing and strategy inherent to capitalism. Sell before it passes (or the market adjusts) to maximize your realized asset value.

Both your examples (eminent domain and a government using propaganda to devalue a company) are forms of confiscation. It doesn’t matter if smart people would be able to foresee and mitigate the damage.

People are going to like that as much as they like devaluations or high inflation.

Start small. People can own one, maybe two housing units (everyone loves a good cabin). Get rid of REITs. Expand building of public housing; don't means-test it, it's available to everyone. Means-testing is how you get impoverished housing projects. Universal public goods have a habit of sticking around and getting funded.

Where do you plan on raising the funds to actually build housing?

Unless it’s economically attractive to invest in real estate, the money won’t flow into housing.

Sure you could have the govt do it, but based on their track record I don’t assume it’ll be done very efficiently.

Sorry, to clarify... Are you saying that because we have public transit no one can own cars anymore?

The generous way to read the post above is an arrangement where property ownership can be both public and private - possibly where rental units are majority state owned and private ownership is more concentrated in actual residents.

>” ...real solution to the housing crises is the abolishment of professional landlords... Why [] support a system where people can own many properties[...] Treating housing as an investment vehicle is fundamentally incompatible...

It’s akin to saying most transit should be gov owned: cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships... they may allow you to own one private vehicle.

>Sorry, to clarify... Are you saying that because we have public transit no one can own cars anymore?

You joke but many people here would support just that.

Eeeeh, in the long run I think it'll just become unnecessary to own a personal car for most people if self-driving car fleets become a thing - I dunno... it might be a luxury like owning your own boat, if you're vacationing on a lake you can always rent one so why pay to maintain something you very rarely need... more apt might be to consider it equivalent to owning your own train car.

At any rate I don't think personal property ownership should be made illegal, it could just be made to cost - taxi companies are taxed for running a fleet of vehicles and charging people to ride on them, that sort of mass property ownership could be similarly taxed.

I think everyone can agree that the private car culture destroyed any hope for good public transport in the US.

I grew up in Boston and it actually had a wonderful public transit system - assuming you're a comfortable in the city and not fearful of who you'll bump into on the bus.