[ckaihatsu]

Would Tax on Vacant Homes Be Enough to Push Owners to Lease Empty SF Units?

According to recent Census data, about 15% of apartments, condos and houses in San Francisco are unoccupied.

https://www.sfpublicpress.org/would-tax ... -sf-units/

[Pants-of-dog]

No, that is a stupid comment on your part.

I conceded that gentrification was a big reason for the price increases (over that specific time period) in New York City.
That does not mean that immigration plays no role in New York City, and that does not mean anything for areas in the rest of the country.

You claimed it was immigration and made no mention of other factors. This clearly indicates that you were arguing that immigration is the sole reason for high hissing costs.

Now we see that immigration is one small factor and other things like gentrification are. a bigger factor.

Again, this is anti-immigrant pseudoscience.

Now let us see if you can support any of your claim that California residents are moving to Oregon because of i migration.

I sincerely doubt it. It seems like one of these things you want to believe because it blames immigrants l

[Crantag]

Crantag, isn't it true you live in the Portland, Oregon area?

I think immigration very much has been playing a role in the driving up of prices in your area, but you just do not see it.

Maybe you need to familiarise yourself with the concept known as "chain migration". That's where one group moves from A to B, and it causes another group that was previously leaving in B to move to C. (It is the reason why Attila the Hun is considered one of the reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire even though the Huns did not directly invade the Roman Empire)

A lot of the people who have been buying properties and moving to Portland over the last 20 years were not born in Oregon. Just because they are white does not mean it is not caused by immigration. Maybe you need to think about the places where they originally moved from - in particular California

No I am not from Portland. Oregon is bigger than Portland and being from Oregon doesn't mean I'm from Portland.

And yeah the Californians are the main fucktards buying up the housing here.

[ckaihatsu]

the Californians

[Truth To Power]

The New York Times published an article lamenting the lack of affordable "starter" homes.
It admits that one of the main reasons is land prices.

The unimproved value of land is simply the amount of money the landowner can expect to legally steal from the community by owning the land -- i.e., the net after-tax subsidy to idle landowning. Land price determines housing price because people are not willing to live in inexpensive houses when they have paid a fortune for the land. So it is impossible to have affordable housing when you make housing (actually land) a good "investment" by constantly forcing up the subsidy to idle landowning.

This just goes with what I've been saying all along. The cause is immigration. Immigration leads to overcrowding in the already more densely populated areas where people want to live and where the job opportunities are concentrated. This drives land and home prices up.

While the Law of Rent says any increase in labor supply -- immigration, higher labor force participation by women, births exceeding deaths, etc. -- will tend to increase land rents and reduce wages, the real determining factor in land value is the net after-tax welfare subsidy to idle landowning. TX has had very high immigration for decades, but housing remained affordable as long as the property tax rate was high. Unfortunately, the same evil anti-property-tax ideology that has destroyed CA has taken hold in TX, and property tax rates are falling, making housing unaffordable.

In Japan in the 1980s, there was effectively no immigration, but housing became insanely unaffordable because the government relentlessly reduced the land tax rate at the same time it forced interest rates down. When the sum of the tax rate and the discount rate is less than the rent growth rate, land value becomes infinite.
That is pretty definitively unaffordable.

At the root is the math problem of putting -- or keeping -- a low-cost home on increasingly pricey land.

And the math problem of pricey land is that people are willing to pay commensurately for a license to steal. If a land deed legally entitles you to steal $100K a year, forever, it is worth as much as a perpetuity of $100K/yr -- but of course, with land, unlike a perpetuity, you are pretty much guaranteed that you will be entitled to steal exponentially more over time.

[Puffer Fish]

You claimed it was immigration and made no mention of other factors. This clearly indicates that you were arguing that immigration is the sole reason for high hissing costs.

Reality can often be more complicated than simple, isn't it?

It's unreasonable to expect me to have stated all the details of everything. If I actually had, it would have been so long and complicated that few people would have had the attention span to read it and even if they had it would probably be too complicated for them to even easily think about or form any opinion about it.

Anyway, like I've been saying, a big part of the reason all these white people are crowding into certain areas and driving up housing costs is foreign immigration. It's just an indirect effect.

Maybe I need to start a separate thread about how immigration played a huge role in causing the 2007 Recession. How it contributed to the build up of an unsustainable bubble in the economy.

Then we'd have to connect the dots for you so you understand how the 2007 Recession led to young professionals just out of college crowding into cities like New York and San Francisco and housing prices going up.

[Drlee]

When I was a youngster a man working as a clerk at a hardware store earned enough money to purchase a house. Today a clerk at a hardware store cannot afford to purchase a house. It is not even within reach on the salaries of two people working in hardware stores.

Consider this quick and dirty example. Suppose we have mom, dad and two children. Mom and dad both earn $15.00 an hour. This is considered a decent amount for a retail job. High in most parts of the country.

These two have current debts. Let's call those debts $1000.00 per month. This would be moderate indeed considering a car, insurance and the expenses of raising two kids with both partners working. According to the calculator I used, if they could save and put $10,000.00 down they would qualify for a 30 year mortgage on a house or condo costing $177,000.00 Given their need for a minimum 3 bedroom unit, a quick zillow search shows nothing for sale at that price in a safe neighborhood (and only two houses in unsafe ones) in Tucson, a town of over 1 million people.

The problem with housing in the US is not that there is not enough of it. It is that there are too few people who can afford it. Housing is available. In the moderate price range in Tucson of homes under $450,000 there are 1200 homes to choose from.

We pay our working class people FAR too little and then whine (I'm looking at all the limousine liberals at the NYT you cited) because these working class people can't afford a house. Or a new car. Or health insurance. Or......

Do illegal aliens drive down the cost of labor to some degree? Absolutely. But how much? Well. I hired three guys (with whom I conversed in Spanish) to do some yard work for me. They arrived at 8 AM and left at 1:30 PM. They worked really hard and made my acre of mostly desert xeroscaping look fantastic. And they stopped at the dump on the way home and dropped off the stuff they removed. So let's round up to 6 hours each. They charged me 600.00 and I gave them a $100.00 tip. Let's call the tip "travel time". So each guy got $33.33 an hour and after my house headed for my brothers house to do his work. At $30+ per hour they are not driving down labor costs. That is very good money. If they could do that six hours a day, five days a week, that is $1000.00 a week. Or in round numbers $50K per year. (And to the extent that they want it to be, all of it could be tax free. ) That is more than a beginning school teacher makes here. And remember we are talking 30 hours a week. Bump that up and they are doing just fine. So pay attention Puffer.

These guys are self employed. And I can assure you they stay busy. Are they illegals? I am not going to ask. Not my concern.

But lets assume you are talking legal immigrants. How many of them make $30+ per hour? That would be about damned few. Most are working for American businesses, owned by American people, who are making money from their work. And for the most part these AMERICAN bosses are paying them squat.

We can stop illegal immigration tomorrow and fire half the border patrol agents. How? By workplace enforcement of the immigration laws prohibiting the employing of illegal aliens. It is said that there are about 8.2 million illegal people working in the US. According to employment statistics from the Department of Labor, there are currently 6.8 million unemployed people in the US. So if the 8.2 million people who are working illegally were to suddenly lose their jobs we would be well and truly fucked. The economy would crash.

You mention the lagging reproduction rates in the US. Consider this. Significantly more than one in 10 K-12 students in California, Texas and Arizona are illegally in the country. Far more if you consider the American born children of illegal's who are here legally but would have to leave if their parents were to be deported or return voluntarily to their country of origin.

So I want you to forget housing for a moment and look to a future where we lose 10% of our future workforce during times of contracting population growth rates. What does that future look like to you?

I am a conservative who is strong on illegal immigration. I firmly believe in workplace enforcement. But such enforcement without an amnesty would destroy our economy overnight. The solution, which I do not believe we will ever achieve by the way, is an amnesty that puts current illegals on the tax rolls and, only then, looks to stop illegal immigration in its tracks by drying up their jobs.

Long post but the point is that we can't look at one tiny piece of immigration, legal or otherwise, and believe we are seeing the whole picture.

Pay American workers enough to pay for expenses (including health care and provision for retirement) and still have enough left over to buy a modest family home, and that simple economic principle you mentioned earlier will have houses growing like trees.

[BlutoSays]

The problem is not how much people are paid.

The problem is devaluation of the dollar by financially illiterate morons dumping helicopter money because of the demands of the Free Shit Army. Of course the market responds by jacking up prices, because there's no pushback and the feedback mecanism of price discovery is killed. Why? Because they can.

Is this really rocket surgery?

[Drlee]

Is this really rocket surgery?

Apparently.

[ckaihatsu]

I am a conservative who is strong on illegal immigration. I firmly believe in workplace enforcement. But such enforcement without an amnesty would destroy our economy overnight. The solution, which I do not believe we will ever achieve, is an amnesty that puts current illegals on the tax rolls and which, only then, stops illegal immigration in its tracks by drying up the jobs.

Long post but the point is that we can't look at one tiny piece of immigration, legal or otherwise, and believe we are seeing the whole picture.

Pay American workers enough to pay for expenses including health care and still have enough left over to buy a modest family home and that simply economic principle you mentioned earlier will have houses growing like trees.

This winds up being 'nativism' (I think), and definitely nationalist trade-protectionism -- over labor markets.

If markets are so fuckin-awesome then why would you need national labor-protectionist wage supports?

But first, wait -- are you really *suggesting* wage-supports, or the government subsidizing of *wages* somehow?

You could make a whole political *career* out of that kind of campaign promise. (grin)

[ckaihatsu]

Also, don't forget the *ethnic cleansing*.

[Puffer Fish]

I am a conservative who is strong on illegal immigration. I firmly believe in workplace enforcement. But such enforcement without an amnesty would destroy our economy overnight. The solution, which I do not believe we will ever achieve by the way, is an amnesty that puts current illegals on the tax rolls and, only then, looks to stop illegal immigration in its tracks by drying up their jobs.

It has already been tried under Reagan. The problem was, amnesty was given, but the promise to stop the flow over the border was not carried through.
Because of that, conservatives are going to be extremely skeptical of ever making such a bargain again, not without some guarantees and power to enforce the bargain.

[Puffer Fish]

In Japan in the 1980s, there was effectively no immigration, but housing became insanely unaffordable because the government relentlessly reduced the land tax rate at the same time it forced interest rates down. When the sum of the tax rate and the discount rate is less than the rent growth rate, land value becomes infinite.

And now the land prices in Japan have become much more affordable, as Japan's population has been stagnant or declining. More so in areas outside of Tokyo, since all the young people want to move to Tokyo. But even in Tokyo too.

Some people blame the policies of Japan's Central Bank for not letting housing prices fall in the wake of the real estate bubble bursting in 1991. The Central Bank did not want to let prices deflate.


I will agree with you that there is an inverse relationship between land tax rates and real estate prices... although it does not necessarily make real estate any more affordable.

Why does it seem most of those on the Left are the ones who support the Central Bank artificially keeping interest rates down?

[late]

Why does it seem most of those on the Left are the ones who support the Central Bank artificially keeping interest rates down?

Google Alan Greenspan.

[Pants-of-dog]

Housing costs are high for one simple reason: landowners, landlords, developers, speculators, and other people who make money off housing are trying to maximise their profits by making it as expensive as the market will bear.

[ckaihatsu]

Why does it seem most of those on the Left are the ones who support the Central Bank artificially keeping interest rates down?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banking_crises

[Pants-of-dog]

Reality can often be more complicated than simple, isn't it?

Yes, which is why your claim was incorrect.

It's unreasonable to expect me to have stated all the details of everything. If I actually had, it would have been so long and complicated that few people would have had the attention span to read it and even if they had it would probably be too complicated for them to even easily think about or form any opinion about it.

Anyway, like I've been saying, a big part of the reason all these white people are crowding into certain areas and driving up housing costs is foreign immigration. It's just an indirect effect.

Yes. After I disproved your argument about immigration, this is the new one.

Please let me know when you have evidence.

[Drlee]

@ckaihatsu It has already been tried under Reagan. The problem was, amnesty was given, but the promise to stop the flow over the border was not carried through.
Because of that, conservatives are going to be extremely skeptical of ever making such a bargain again, not without some guarantees and power to enforce the bargain.

Not "conservatives". Employers.

Conservatives are their own enemy in this issue. They have railed against immigration for decades. They have vilified undocumented workers, even going so far as characterizing them as "rapists" and "disease carriers". They fear that these people, if granted a path to citizenship, will vote against them. They very well might and who can blame them.

But at the end of the day it is republican business owners, farmers, ranchers and such who desperately need these workers.

Like it or not, until the upcoming recession hits we are in need of low wage workers. Why low wage? Because small business needs them. Big business exploits the shit out of them. They are the modern slave class. The proof is that other than the idiotic tag game that goes on at the border (which by the way a wall would do nothing to solve) we do not enforce immigration laws. All the time that Trump was whining about "dirty rapist illegals" his hotels and resorts were employing them in great numbers. He was even importing legal immigrants via guest worker permits rather than pay higher wages to attract citizen workers.

And POD is correct. This is all about labor costs. Costs the right keeps artificially low. Just look at the minimum wage in red states versus blue ones.

It's unreasonable to expect me to have stated all the details of everything. If I actually had, it would have been so long and complicated that few people would have had the attention span to read it and even if they had it would probably be too complicated for them to even easily think about or form any opinion about it.

Anyway, like I've been saying, a big part of the reason all these white people are crowding into certain areas and driving up housing costs is foreign immigration. It's just an indirect effect.

So your argument is that racism is the cause of rising housing costs. I agree that this is true in areas where racists wish to congregate. And this racism gives rise to crime and poverty. Clearly you are correct in your assertion.

[Pants-of-dog]

White flight would drive up housing costs in the neighbourhoods to which white people fled.

Yet we see the highest rise in housing costs in big cities, which is not where white people are fleeing to.

Thus, the argument seems incorrect.

[ckaihatsu]

I am a conservative who is strong on illegal immigration. I firmly believe in workplace enforcement. But such enforcement without an amnesty would destroy our economy overnight. The solution, which I do not believe we will ever achieve by the way, is an amnesty that puts current illegals on the tax rolls and, only then, looks to stop illegal immigration in its tracks by drying up their jobs.

It has already been tried under Reagan. The problem was, amnesty was given, but the promise to stop the flow over the border was not carried through.
Because of that, conservatives are going to be extremely skeptical of ever making such a bargain again, not without some guarantees and power to enforce the bargain.

What about the *economics* -- why have you both personally chosen to tout the nationalist 'geographic country' line, even to the expense of enforcing and beefing-up a whole *border wall*, costing people their *lives* -- ? Isn't that a severe impediment to 'free trade', and 'supply and demand' -- ?

Why should the taxpayer be expected to fund *physical tariffs* / the border -- ?