London: the city that ate itself

Re:London: the city that ate itself by eru on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @12:55AM (#9803024)

> Couldn't this be solved by passing city ordinances, and state taxes on vacant properties, non-primary houses, and un-rented apartment spaces?

Why restrict these taxes only to unused spaces? If you do so, you'll have to get around people only nominally using the spaces.

> Without any way to counter balance out speculation, land hording, and gentrification/displacement of urban areas, syndicates of real-estate investors would just buy up everything in sight, turn it into luxury condos/lofts and set the price at a rate determined to be some minimum of %75 of the target populations' average income..

If only making money was so easy..

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Re:London: the city that ate itself by wmil on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @10:29AM (#9805441)

Keeping a large number of properties empty is extremely disruptive to transit planners. They have to puzzle through the situation where homes next to the subway aren't using the subway.

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Re:London: the city that ate itself by nosuchthing on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @02:48PM (#9807578)

>Why restrict these taxes only to unused spaces?

To create an incentive for unused spaces to be used, instead of horded.

>If you do so, you'll have to get around people only nominally using the spaces.

Who could pull that off? Someone who owns 4 houses?.. 10 apartment units?

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Re:London: the city that ate itself by eru on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @11:25PM (#9809908)

How would the legal system tell apart used from unused spaces? How would you make that distinction hard to game for someone with expensive lawyers and resources.

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