Why do you care what someone else does with THEIR property?
If I want to own something and leave it "empty", that's my prerogative
If I want to own something and leave it "empty", that's my prerogative
People collectively can decide(and frequently do decide) that the values important to a town, a city or an entire state are more important than your right to buy and leave property empty. There are many places which either forbid owning property entirely if you are a foreign national and don't actually live there, or impose a heavy tax on such purchases. Vacancy tax is a thing too.
Basically if a city(and by that I mean people of the city and its representatives) don't want houses to be sitting around empty, there are laws that can be introduced to force people to either move in, rent or sell the place, or they can keep the place standing empty at a heavy financial penalty if they wish. Like I said earlier - your prerogative ends somewhere.
Yes - and YOUR prerogative ends at demanding I rent-out property I OWN
If someone wants to own 50 houses and leave them empty, more power to them
Also known as passing laws to impose a penalty on unwanted behavior. Just as GP mentioned - vacancy tax.
That's how the country works. It all depends on who has more people in agreement, and can make more of a rallying cry (and has moneyed interests on their side).
(I'm also in favor of land value tax as opposed to property tax to encourage productive use of land. And severely relaxing zoning restrictions)
while that's true in this case of vacancy laws, it is not a universally applicable rule to be followed blindly.
Just because a large number of people agreed with a certain set of actions, doesn't mean those set of actions are good to undertake for society. Look at how venezuela got to the place they did, via democratic elections. The a majority of the people wanted the gov't handouts, and wanted nationalization of private property by force.
Obviously you think that what I own is actually yours
At least we all know where you stand now
So yes, I think we know where we stand now, except that it's not where you think it is.