Apologies if I missed this, but isn't the "market-based" solution to developers holding onto land to make it expensive to hold onto land, i.e. increase Vancouver (and other metro regions') property taxes? Vancouver's property tax is pitifully low.
My impression is that if we want affordable housing we need to a) reduce barriers to building it (as you've described) b) increase the level of nonprofit and government housing (to compete with private sector) c) *make it expensive to not build housing*.
It's the "carrying cost" question: if it's expensive to hold onto a property, you incentivize increasing the "productivity" of that property. In the case of individual homeowners, this incentivizes them to sell earlier, rather than hold on in hopes of a windfall later on. It incentivizes developers to build more units. And a side effect is that it should incentivize individuals to stop treating property as an investment.
Instinctively, I feel like turning that sort of thing around on a dime would be catastrophic, but regular, significant increases in property taxes over time up to a point where people can still make a return on their investment in land, but one that is lesser than, for example, investing in productive assets, would help the housing crisis so, so much. And it would have the side effect of boosting industries, since people would focus their investments there.
The problem with incentivizing developers to build more is it winds up being a wealth transfer from the public to developers, when those developers don't have any interest in building affordable units. We could make it cheaper for them to build, and maybe that'll slow the increasing cost of housing, but it'll never solve a housing crunch, never mind a housing crisis. More capitalism won't solve capitalism.
It might be catastrophic to turn housing around on a dime, but idk I'd argue it's already proved catastrophic not to.
I think my use of the word "incentivize" threw things off. What I'm proposing is exactly the opposite: it's punishing people and developers for not building units (taxes as a stick, rather than tax credits as a carrot). Vancouver has stupidly low property taxes, which means that a homeowner or developer can hold onto a property that *should* have 30 people living on it even if it currently has none, or just a single family. Just by increasing property taxes to the Canadian average you would likely see the number of single family homes go down and apartments or condos go up. If I understand correctly, the average property tax rate in Canada is *4x* Vancouver's.
Apologies if I missed this, but isn't the "market-based" solution to developers holding onto land to make it expensive to hold onto land, i.e. increase Vancouver (and other metro regions') property taxes? Vancouver's property tax is pitifully low.
My impression is that if we want affordable housing we need to a) reduce barriers to building it (as you've described) b) increase the level of nonprofit and government housing (to compete with private sector) c) *make it expensive to not build housing*.
It's the "carrying cost" question: if it's expensive to hold onto a property, you incentivize increasing the "productivity" of that property. In the case of individual homeowners, this incentivizes them to sell earlier, rather than hold on in hopes of a windfall later on. It incentivizes developers to build more units. And a side effect is that it should incentivize individuals to stop treating property as an investment.
Instinctively, I feel like turning that sort of thing around on a dime would be catastrophic, but regular, significant increases in property taxes over time up to a point where people can still make a return on their investment in land, but one that is lesser than, for example, investing in productive assets, would help the housing crisis so, so much. And it would have the side effect of boosting industries, since people would focus their investments there.
The problem with incentivizing developers to build more is it winds up being a wealth transfer from the public to developers, when those developers don't have any interest in building affordable units. We could make it cheaper for them to build, and maybe that'll slow the increasing cost of housing, but it'll never solve a housing crunch, never mind a housing crisis. More capitalism won't solve capitalism.
It might be catastrophic to turn housing around on a dime, but idk I'd argue it's already proved catastrophic not to.
I think my use of the word "incentivize" threw things off. What I'm proposing is exactly the opposite: it's punishing people and developers for not building units (taxes as a stick, rather than tax credits as a carrot). Vancouver has stupidly low property taxes, which means that a homeowner or developer can hold onto a property that *should* have 30 people living on it even if it currently has none, or just a single family. Just by increasing property taxes to the Canadian average you would likely see the number of single family homes go down and apartments or condos go up. If I understand correctly, the average property tax rate in Canada is *4x* Vancouver's.