The worst idea is ever giving down payment assistance. Government subsidizing actual builders, sure, but free money to property owners just increases the price to meet supply and demand and goes right into their pocket. It actually increases home prices. Extremely stupid.
I’m all for it of they include vacant land… I wouldn’t mind having acreage, and getting one of them unfinished Amazon houses.
This is just to first time home buyers, not to anyone buying a house
Don’t know that it would be sufficient, but it’s not free money to all property owners, just those that haven’t yet been able to get to home ownership, but have been renting consistently for a couple of years.
So if in a normal market, a new homebuyer has a budget that’s about $15k less than some speculative asshat looking for an investment rather than a home, then this tips the scales in favor of that would-be new homebuyer.
There needs to be some sort of tipping the scale in favor of people seeking to own their own primary residence versus those that already have their primary residence and ideally disincentivize those looking to acquire property they have no interest in using themselves.
When I say free money to the owners, I mean the primary effect on the market is only to increase the price, giving more money to sellers and more equity to owners. Without a significant increase in supply, it won’t help much and giving 25k for single family homes would be counterproductive in general in my opinion. You want to fuck speculators and parasitic landlords, you do it by increasing supply. That can include a focused effort on high density and mixed use housing that the 25k doesn’t help with.
Note that the proposed incentive only goes into play after a set level of housing stock is constructed. So significant new stock with advantage to people seeking first primary residence.
It’s more pointless than bad, I would think.
Nah, using tax dollars to increase property values in a housing crisis is counterproductive as fuck. It increases rents for everyone else as well. Better off attacking it from the supply side with a massive subsidized housing effort and just tanking the market. But that’s politically toxic.
Federal housing policy has always been about inflating housing asset values. The Harris “plan” is just more of the same. Anyone who thinks either party actually wants to lower housing prices is delusional.
The problem is that almost everyone would be better off if the housing market tanked. Except donors.
Of the four ideas that are listed on this picture that’s the one you gonna go with for being the worst?
I hate any financial assistance that doesn’t address the root cause, because all it is at that point is more tax and wealth transfer to the rich.
Aaaaaand I know everyone hates when someone points out their hypocrisy so I’m sure I’ll get crucified for this…
This applies to student loan forgiveness too.
Absolutely. I’m for student loan forgiveness, but right now it’s just giving money to banks and then burdening the next generation with the cost.
That’s the feature of these issues, there is no incentive for people “fixing” them to end the grift.
I don’t know how it is in the USA but here in France we kinda have the following issues:
- People leave the countryside and small cities en masse
- Houses rot empty anywhere that’s more than a commute away from a big city
- There’s a huge shortage of housing in the cities
We need people coming back to the countryside and small cities but all the employment is bundled away in big cities…
I’m here in Georgia, USA. The small towns in my state, those well outside the major metro suburbs, are either emptying out OR the state is bringing in non-union factory and data center jobs to dominate the local economy with the promise of jobs and economic revitalization. These companies are given huge tax incentives to build (or relocate) and thus contribute nothing to local coffers directly (necessitating higher property and sales taxes on locals). Currently, there’s a car plant being built near where I live. The locals in the rural areas were shocked to find out after construction began that their water wells might stop working as the factory and it’s subsequent suppliers setting up in the area will be draining the county dry… the state said they could. They’re out of pocket to drill deeper wells and the state doesn’t care… at the state level, they’ve actually made it harder (legally through environmental review) for local municipalities to direct the development of water infrastructure but easier for private developers (who have fewer reviews to go through) to just build whatever water infrastructure they see fit. Meanwhile, back in town, a handful of out of state multibillion dollar corporations are buying up any and all real estate that isn’t nailed down and renting it back to us at exorbitant prices.
WFH, better communications, give benefits to anyone opening business in a small town, …
it’s sorta like that but with way more opioid deaths
edit: and instead of rotting empty, megacorporations buy the empty homes and turn them into airBnBs to keep the house prices high. maybe that happens in france too?
The US has a population density of 33 people km2, But “Massss deportation!”
Yeah. If you’ve every been to Wyoming, you know that the country is not even close to overcrowded.
So the mass deportation would be of lawful alien residents, because undocumented residents cannot buy houses unless it is straight up cash, and even then would have a hard time getting insurance or utilities, you know, without a SSN, credit history or IDs. Unless they use a stolen SSN, which is very difficult and rare.
Down payment assistance is just going to drive prices up.
Yep, the big fix is to tax the hell out of single family housing owned by corporations. But no politician would dare run on that platform.
I’d settle for breaking apart the housing cartel personally. Its already illegal.
Immigrants own Chase Manhattan?!!?!
Damn, lern somethin’ new errday …
This meme is extremely naive. For many American voters, the primary residence is their one major investment – and will severely punish any elected official that reduces housing prices. The result is neither party will do much on this issue.
I hope that you’re right, because in 20 years that will no longer be true, and maybe we’ll be able to make real progress on housing at that point.
It’s only going to get worse in the coming years as weather gets more extreme and entire towns and city’s get swallowed up by the ocean.
My assessed house value being high only makes my property tax burden higher.
I’m not particularly eager to use my residence as a financial instrument, I use it to live in, not just some asset.
Meanwhile, I’m worried about the next generation of my extended family finding somewhere to live without getting stuck on the rental treadmill. If my house value tanked 60% but now the folks currently struggling to own a house can find them, I’d be ecstatic.
“Kill 3 kids and bulldoze the neighboring nature reserve (it won’t give us more chairs, but it’ll feel good)”
its called a nature reserve because its a piece of nature thats reserved to be used as a golf course in the future
They ban abortion and then don’t want those babies/future adults housed. Classic.
But both parties are the same? Right? RIGHT?!
Bothesidezzz
Quick reminder: The Nazi German government emptied out Eastern European towns and villages taken by the Wehrmacht during various campaigns, most notably Operation Barbarossa, for resettlement of “pure” Germans to those occupied lands (called Lebensraum)… this started almost literally once these occupied towns and villages were far enough from the front lines. Also, the whole point of the US Government’s genocidal forced march of native tribes, often referred to as the Tail of Tears, was to clear said native tribes out so the Southern aristocracy could seize the land for plantations worked by chattel slaves… whole swaths of what is today Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were settled by whites as a result.
Many a “populist” (read: Fascist or proto-Fascist) operate their politics in this manner. Promise either cheap land (or, at the very least, housing) to the workers and others by committing what is, on it’s face, a genocide. There’s more modern examples (two in particular, going on right this minute for all the world to see), but I don’t want to get the ban-hammer so I won’t name them directly (I forgot to check the instance in which I am commenting before doing so, but not taking my chances).
If they really wanted to change regulations they’d push changing zoning regulations in cities to allow building anything other than detached single family housing. That would be totally reasonable and help alongside tax incentives. But I have a feeling that’s not what’s meant by changing regulations…
I thinks that’s one of those state’s rights things where federal government can’t just tell a town how to zone it’s own land unless they’re taking it away from the town like for a national Park or something.
It’s actually an instance of super small government. Those regulations are dictated by city’s and counties not by states
The american dream isnt raising a family in an apartment, and a lot of people were raised on that dream.
We need to change the perception of condensed housing I think before there is support for that.
Before you can start to change public perception it needs to be legal to build densely. Parking minimums and a variety of other commercial building code regulations make this much more expensive in the US, all while the people nearby in single family homes fight any new builds due to their poor perception of condos and apartments. Just removing the stigma is only one part of the equation.
The best way to change perception of mixed use residential areas is having people live there.
The bigger issue is that these buildings don’t work by themselves. The biggest issue with suburbia is car dependency, which can only be countered by walkable cities and public transport (both of which require higher population densities)
They said “making federal land available”. I take that as they want to sell off land in places like national parks to be developed.
Which, needless to say, is an awful idea.
I have one “weird” and “radical” proposal: public housing to rent. Not to but. At affordable price. That would lower the price of every house, flat, …
