this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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Zillow is a part of the problem. With all the data collected and only a few companies, prices are conveniently increasing at extreme rates. It is not just cities; land and rural areas are increasing at high rates.
The real issue is the commodification of housing. Houses shouldn't make people money; they are supposed to be homes to live in.
Nothing wrong with houses as individual investments. Why the hell else would you dump that kinda money and pay ALL the upkeep for decades?! You write the interest off your taxes, have something to show for 30 years of payments when you retire.
Also, nothing wrong with a landlord owning a few homes. He likely ain't making shit and is taking huge risks. Yes, it'll pay out someday, hopefully.
The issue is corporate home ownership and, to a lesser extent, B&Bs. Yes, a bank can easily "own" hundreds or thousands of homes. After all, they provide loans and sometimes have to foreclose. But banks renting homes?! Fuck no.
This is easily solvable with legislation, not even "devil is in the details" complexity. We drop the hammer on these corporate landlords, tax the fucking snot out them and run them out of the game. Same goes for entities sitting on real estate, waiting on prices to go up. Tax the hell out of empty homes that have been on the market X days.
The issue is corporate landlords. Rent didn't used to be like this, it was competitive. My first place was a shithole in college, $250/mo. (I'd happily live there again were I a bachelor.) Same place should be $630. Anyone seen rent that low for anything outside renting a single room in a house?
Housing as an investment leads to real estate speculation which pushes up prices. It creates a class of people who stand to gain when property values, and downstream of that rent, go up.
This class of people are very wealthy and tend to oppose any action that will decrease there property value. That includes things like building dense affordable housing, especially close to them, as that increases the supply of housing and thus decreases there property value.
This is true especially for land lords, even small "mom and pop" landlords. There goal is to raise rent and the value of there investment. Anything that will lower rent or even stabilize it like rent control they will oppose, no matter their scale.
Tl;dr: housing speculation creates a wealthy class of people opposed to housing affordability.
Exactly, and trying to fix the problem with regulations is only a temporary bandage to a problem that looks a whole lot like a shotgun wound.
The thing about social democracy (regulated capitalism) is that it is a system that leaves the wealthy in charge of everything. This will inevitably lead to corruption solely because of the fact that corruption is possible to begin with.
It's like putting a box of matches next to a campfire expecting it to never light on fire when there's a bucket of water next to it that you can dunk it in, except the bucket is behind you and everyone keeps telling you to not look behind you because it's dangerous.
My proposed solution? Hard wealth cap at $50m via wealth tax of 100% above that number (also closing all tax loopholes), force all corporations to split up to local, worker-owned coops (which also has the intended side-effect of abolishing the stock market), and provide all basic necessities free of charge paid for by tax dollars just to start.
Obviously there are other things that need fixing, like police reform, bloated military budget, etc. as well that would need to be addressed.