ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they’re doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
No, because
Your unimproved land value may increase in that instance, but it wouldn’t suddenly jump up the amount you’re implying, unless the economy catastrophically collapses.
That’s exactly an instance where this would happen. Since the value of the land itself not what’s built on it is valuable in this instance. Look at the value of the land near any ski resort town over the last 10 years.
The assessed value of a property is only indirectly related to the property tax that the owner pays. Municipalities multiply the assessed value of a property by the mill rate to calculate the taxes. They set the mill rate essentially by dividing their budgetary revenue needs by the total assessed value of all properties in the municipality. If my assessment goes way up (say, I put an addition on my house), then my taxes go up. But if everybody’s assessment goes up proportionally, then my taxes don’t change, because the mill rate will drop.
The latter is the situation in those ski-resort towns. It means that property owners suddenly have a much-higher net worth, but doesn’t necessarily mean they’re paying more in taxes. It only means that if the rich people moving in demand more and better municipal services, and raise spending.
On the other hand, look at the perverse incentive built into the current system: Landlords can reduce their taxes by letting their properties decay (lowering their assessed value); or at least, the system disincentivizes improvements which raise the assessed value. In a popular ski-resort town, or college town like mine, we get slumlords, because the vacancy rate is so low that they know that they can get tenants even in run-down units.