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0 pointsmjmahone173y ago0 comments

The other thing people who own land can do: take out a mortgage to build more homes on their land, live in one and either sell the subdivided land/co-op/condo units or rent them to others.

The only people who can be “driven out” are the renters, but if you let owners subdivide and build more, even they should be able to stay in the neighborhood indefinitely. It’s only once you break the chain by not building new homes that the existing community is forced to move. The original neighbors may become a minority compared to the newcomers, but the alternatives to building enough housing for everyone who wants to live in a neighborhood appears to me to be:

- make your neighborhood undesirable for even you to live in.

- make it impossible for new people to buy their way into the community.

- accept that non-owners and not-rich-enough owners will be priced out and forced to move from their homes.

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skybrian3y ago

This is a scenario where there are no zoning rules preventing the denser housing from being built.

It might be easier to fix zoning first?

(Property that's zoned to allow more development is more valuable, but property owners are often against lifting zoning restrictions anyway.)

int_19h3y ago

It's usually implied in most Georgist proposals.

mekkkkkk3y ago

Wouldn't mortgaging and bootstrapping profitable land use become incredibly hard in a world where 100% of land value was taxed?

zozbot2343y ago

On the contrary, it would be easier because you'd only need to take a mortgage on the improvement value, the land itself would be very cheap. Sure, you'd have to pay ground rent to the government but that would simply offset other taxes you would've owed regardless.

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