Doesn't that happen already at the margins, albeit not quite as fast if someone's "land rich"?

On the flipside, I bet there are locales where the buildings have a lot of improvements with multi-story dwellings and the land tax could be worse.

The article goes into detail about why this tentatively works for Detroit where the majority of tax bills will decrease.

the exceptions essentially nullify the point of the land value tax though.

the whole point of an LVT is to aknowledge that land is a valuable resource to the community at large, and using it ineffectively is a harm to the community and should be discouraged through taxation. every exception you make not only removes the incentive, but then creates an incentive to not change the usage of that land to something more beneficial, because the people who've received the exception don't want to give it up.

It reduces the impact of the land tax, it doesn't nullify it, because it would apply only to a minority of the land owning population -- likely a small minority.

> the exceptions essentially nullify the point of the land value tax though

Or they just time shift it until the person receiving the exception moves away and the property goes to someone without the exception.

why are homeowners special in that regard? Why not guarantee renters a certain rent level? are they too poor?

So you would like to give tax breaks for those who put their home on especially valuable plots of land? The more valuable, the more of a break they get. If they manage to reduce their assessed income more, they get more of a break, too.

Sounds a bit silly.

You could give people a UBI equivalent to the median's persons LVT tax take (or first quartile from the bottom etc). That way the poorer people get a net payment from the LVT system. And you don't need to sniff in people's personal lives to determine which residence is their primary residence (if any) nor what would be burdensome.