As a renter, I’m not a fan of this. The worst landlords I’ve had have been local and the best has been a corporation based in another city.
The problem of vacant apartments is that as long as there’s a shortage of housing in places people want, housing that has been built will increase in value. If we reduce the artificial constraints on building more housing, it will also remove the incentive to leave housing vacant.
This happened in Switzerland, where towns with more vacancies were assigned a higher number of refugees. In order to avoid this the towns demolished the empty buildings.
I don't think anyone is recommending we reimplement failed efforts, line for line.
That's what the georgism advocate.
The problem of property as investment is not so new as a problem.
For my part, I am against the over ever evolving taxation schemes such as setting property tax sky high to deter speculators but not homeowners, without addressing the root cause of the current crisis.
First, homeowners are still incentivized to support housing supply restriction. Second, improvement on said properties are disincentivized. Which is why you want to tax land, but not property.
This is a systematic problem, not going to be solved by merely targeting a small part of the landowning population.
I could just leave a PC on mining some random coin to ensure there was always a bit of power going on. Likewise leave a tap slowly going. Cheaper than any tax most likely.
Second homes and vacation homes should be unaffordable. They are a luxury.
Taxes that are too high transition the outcome from wealth redistribution to punishment.
As for the comment about kings and lords, I suppose you're not familiar with the story of Robinhood...
I’m British, I think our society is better than the US due to things like social services, the NHS, etc. What is being discussed here is way outside the realm of British (and definitely American) way of taxation and public/social services.
You have to look at the intention of the tax - as per this discussion - is not about wealth distribution but about enforcing a policy by trying to free up existing homes for the homeless.
In the advocates ideal position there would almost never be any money collected from this tax because it would make a second home or holiday home unaffordable. If people truly want the homeless to all be homed then why not use tax money to build more homes in better locations for those that need them? In the US, UK, and most other countries there is massive amounts of available real estate (could be via building up or building out). The issue here is more than finding a house. Who is going to pay the power, water, rates, insurance, furnishings, transport costs etc (those Martha Vineyard homes are not a great location for homeless trying to work).
Should I be able to get a free home if I refuse to pay rent? What if I can work, but refuse to, should I get a free home? Instead of taking my home, why not build them their own new home.