Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by ajsnigrutin on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @07:36AM (#37913408)

You're looking at a persons home as an economic investment and not as a social thing. It's a home. Someone will live in that house. You just want to replace a poor grandma with someone who can pay more taxes, while the use of the land/house/apartment will stay the same, even with airbnb, someone will just use that apartment to sleep in.

It's the society's best interest that people can afford places to live and not live under threat that some new fad will make something they already own (and need to survive) unaffordable.

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Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by screye on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @08:10AM (#37913733)

Land value tax often goes hand in hand with lax zoning.

In your example, if the grandma's house went from 200k to a 1million, then she isn't poor anymore. She is very rich.

She doesn't have to leave the neighborhood. She can give her house away for redevelopment into a condo. Get the nice penthouse flat and a pretty penny on the same land. Now, she has enough liquidity to pay the land value tax, which is also lower per person because it's distributed over the whole condo.

This is happening in India right now. Apartments are redeveloped into towers. Old residents get 2x the floor space and decent relocation $$ for the construction period. No one is being kicked out of their house. Most people move to another spot within a 10 minutes walk from their home for 3 years and then come back when the building is done.

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Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by ajsnigrutin on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @11:17AM (#37916484)

In my country, a previously ~100k condo apartment now costs 500k+... sometimes even less than that before (city center, no easy parking, lots of noise) and more now (airbnb).

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Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by cultureswitch on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @11:15AM (#37916446)

If grandma owns a house in a place where people want to build an apartment block, she's not poor. By definition.

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Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by ajsnigrutin on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @11:16AM (#37916466)

In my country, the apartment block is already there, but the previously shitty apartment (noise, no easy parking) just became expensive because of stuff like airbnb and speculative investmnts.

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