Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Costs Surge, Report Finds

Re:Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Cost... by nameless912 on Thursday October 12, 2023 @08:42AM (#37856383)

Another option that I really like is forcing rent control on landlords who don't have at least 80% occupancy. Don't want to reduce your rents to market rate? Fine, the law will do that for you.

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Re:Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Cost... by ckdarby on Thursday October 12, 2023 @08:48AM (#37856442)

Places like Vancouver, Canada do this through a vacancy tax. It doesn't appear to do much as those leaving the unit vacant are the extreme wealthy and just factor in the tax to the cost of maintaining the house.

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Re:Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Cost... by usefulcat on Thursday October 12, 2023 @09:12AM (#37856706)

Then the tax is too low to achieve the desired effect?

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Re:Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Cost... by lazide on Thursday October 12, 2023 @09:27AM (#37856845)

And/or not being applied effectively due to corruption or folks lying/hiding empty units.

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Re:Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Cost... by nameless912 on Thursday October 12, 2023 @10:42AM (#37857854)

I always love this counterargument to penalty based enforcement in these sorts of situations. "The penalties don't seem to have the desired effect!" Then the natural conclusion is that they aren't high enough.

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Re:Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Cost... by usefulcat on Thursday October 12, 2023 @10:51AM (#37858027)

If that's not a reasonable conclusion in this particular case, I'm interested in knowing why.

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