this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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Kamala Harris has a new advertising push to draw attention to her plan to build 3 million new homes over four years, a move designed to contain inflationary pressures that also draws a sharp contrast to Republican Donald Trump’s approach.

Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, highlights her plan in a new minute-long ad that uses her personal experience, growing up in rental housing while her mother had saved for a decade before she could buy a home. The ad targets voters in the swing states including Arizona and Nevada. Campaign surrogates are also holding 20 events this week focused on housing issues.

In addition to increasing home construction, Harris is proposing the government provide as much as $25,000 in assistance to first-time buyers. That message carries weight at this moment as housing costs have kept upward pressure on the consumer price index. Shelter costs are up 5.1% over the past 12 months, compared to overall inflation being 2.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Vice President Harris knows we need to do more to address our housing crisis, that’s why she has a plan to end the housing shortage” and will crack down on “corporate landlords and Wall Street banks hiking up rents and housing costs,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director.

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

3 million homes that will be bought by the former employers of her economic team, Black Rock.

She will never do anything that would impact the profits of her owners, the donor class

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

We need more than just that. I'm continuing to email the Biden administration monthly about implementing a vacancy tax for private owners with 3 or more single family dwellings. I'll continue to do so under the Harris administration.

My only shot at every being able to afford a house is if the billionaires and real estate corporations get taken out of the equation. Taxing them for sitting on empty properties is much better than building more for them to snap up because they won't be priced fairly to begin with due to market manipulation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

ironically the quickest way to curb the housing crisis would be to hike the capital gains taxes

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Building more homes and offering subsidies will only put more money into the builders’ pockets. We already have too many homes. The issue is companies owning hundreds or even thousands of homes, only to refuse to sell or rent 75% of them so they can charge 400% more for the 25% they do sell or rent. It’s blatant market manipulation.

Begin a vacant property tax, (based on having more than 30 days in the calendar year with the property empty) which ratchets up as you own more vacant properties. So people can have a summer and winter home if they want, without their tax increasing too much. After all, it’s only one vacant home. But when you own a dozen vacant properties, you’re gonna get fucked hard by the IRS.

It will incentivize companies to actually rent or sell their vacant properties, instead of letting them sit vacant for years at a time. And that 30 days of vacancy should be any 30 days, so people who rent are incentivized to offer longer lease terms and change tenants less than once a year. Meaning short term rentals (AirBnB) will also be less attractive, because they typically only operate at ~50% occupied, as they’ll typically have a few days between rentals. Since short term rentals have been cannibalizing the long term rental markets recently, (lots of landlords have moved towards having properties be full time AirBnBs, which means there are fewer places left for actual tenants,) it will also help correct the rental markets which are overvalued.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

All the data I've seen in the last 5-10 years suggests that we don't have enough homes. Even with vacant homes accounted for and how much burden that would relieve.

That's one of the reasons why there's a growing push to bring back the missing middle housing and businesses into our population centers by removing zoning laws that got rid of them in the first place.

That's not to say that we shouldn't also be doing away with corporate ownership of housing and taxing individuals with 3/4+ homes, especially if they're vacant.

We need a multi-pronged attack on resolving the housing issue, including the 3m planned homes from a Harris admin.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Begin a vacant property tax, (based on having more than 30 days in the calendar year with the property empty) which ratchets up as you own more vacant properties.

Property tax should already ratchet up based on how many properties owned, regardless of if they are occupied or not.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

No anti-monopoly action promised again.

"Build a fuckload of subsidized homes" and "lower prices" (that's what she says, just in smarter words, cause building a lot with budget means will actually increase inflation in all of economy).

If I were American, I'd think I'm being disrespected with such non-sophisticated promises.

"See, if it's not me, it's that delusional anti-vaxxer fascist over the street, nobody else needs you and I love you." - Something like that.

I mean, yeah, if that's your only other choice.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago

So 3 million more abandoned homes. Got it. Can't wait.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

as long as corporations and land horders are allowed to keep buying home and lands to keep the market scarce and rent and sell prices high, it doesnt matter how many homes you build.

and if you issue an immediate ban on mass home hording, and issue massive monthly fines for exceeding the limit, fines that are multiples of the profit that they make, not fractions, enough homes will immediately flood the market and will bring prices and rent down

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

We all must be missing something. This is too obviously the path forward for there not to be some sort of issue with implementing it ASAP.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The issue is that implementing it would basically require an act of God, because the property owners are the ones bribing the lawmakers who would be writing the laws.

When you look at whether a piece of legislation is popular vs whether it’ll be passed, it’s basically no correlation if you’re poor. The graph is basically a flat line, with about a 30% pass rating regardless of how popular it is. Regardless of whether it’s extremely popular or horribly unpopular, the bill has about a 30% chance of getting passed.

But if you look at the graph for people who are rich, the graph looks more like a 1:1 line, where pass rates increase as popularity increases. And conversely, the pass rate decreases as it’s less popular with the rich.

Money talks, and the SCOTUS has legalized bribery. A bill that penalizes landlords would be unpopular with the rich, so it would have a near 0% chance of passing.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago

You all are missing the fact that the problem existing makes you vote for those who promise to solve it. The problem being solved stops that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

The issue is rich people don't want it to happen cause they invest their money in real estate and want the value to keep going up. So they're gonna make sure neither party pushes for anything like that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

We need to look at this thing called 'adapting in place'. I think this is just such a complicated situation that people just need to figure out what's going on around them, at least for the time being. Radical simplification - corporate greed, yes, but it's still complicated as to what exactly we do about it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Step one: rebel. Final step: live free.

Be nice to your neighbors and survive long enough to experience change.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This does nothing to address the root cause of housing price increases. Black rock will buy 2.5 million of these homes.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

The way you address that is build 3 million homes, and rent them out at rates 60% lower than market rate, rather than sell them.

This does not increase ownership, no. But it does force landlords to compete. Why rent from slumlord Paladino, when I could rent a new unit from the US government at half the price?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Exactly this. We already have enough empty dwellings between homes, apartments, condos, etc to house our unhoused population. The issue is affordability, not amount.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  1. No, there are not enough places to live, where people want to live
  2. Supply and demand drive pricing. Whether we should have enough or not, a larger supply should reduce prices
[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago

Supply and demand drive pricing. Whether we should have enough or not, a larger supply should reduce prices

this is storytelling. it is not science.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Man I want to live right where I'm at but everything is an air BNB

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

This is what we need. Build housing!!!!

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Cripple the speculative housing bubble by making corporate property ownership of single family or multifamily dwellings limited to maaaybe 100 properties. Probably less, like 50.

Give them 5 years to unload assets that are in excess of this legislation and get it passed.

Doesn't affect business. Doesn't affect developers, doesn't affect anyone but vulture venture capitalists.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why let them own any? That will just lead to multiple holding corps being made. Just ban corporate ownership of single/multi family homes all together.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

There's gonna be some edge cases like charitable corporations that own property for homeless or something we aren't considering. Blanket bans are rarely the answer.

Even Japan doesn't ban guns. You need to pass tests, have a license, and be subject to storage requirements and inspections of that storage. But it is not banned.

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