Vacant House Taxes have been tried throughout Canada and are generally ineffective. They are just a distraction.
The main reason why they don’t work is fairly obvious: Why would someone own property to keep it vacant?
Sure, there are some people with vacation homes, or second homes where they frequently visit (heck, I might have to get an apartment where my office is located now we’re being forced to return to the office). Oh the Urbanity has a great video where they point out the vast majority of “Vacant Homes” are either students who don’t permanently live there, in the process of a move, under renovation, etc.
I think people who think about housing critically get it, but unfortunately I don’t think most Canadians get this, either on or off Lemmy. It’s too easy to see “1.3 Million Vacant Houses” and think that’s a solution for the Housing Crisis.
-Aggressive tax on empty properties/units
Aggressive and escalating.
The longer you leave a residential property vacant, the higher the tax rate becomes.
Speculating on residential housing needs to become costly more expensive than making it livable and available for people to live there.
Government can do this tomorrow but it will never happen.
He’s regime whores who will do policy that hurts their owners.
Vacant House Taxes have been tried throughout Canada and are generally ineffective. They are just a distraction.
The main reason why they don’t work is fairly obvious: Why would someone own property to keep it vacant?
Sure, there are some people with vacation homes, or second homes where they frequently visit (heck, I might have to get an apartment where my office is located now we’re being forced to return to the office). Oh the Urbanity has a great video where they point out the vast majority of “Vacant Homes” are either students who don’t permanently live there, in the process of a move, under renovation, etc.
Thankfully, off of Lemmy people seem to get this, and we’re all talking construction and rezoning now.
I think people who think about housing critically get it, but unfortunately I don’t think most Canadians get this, either on or off Lemmy. It’s too easy to see “1.3 Million Vacant Houses” and think that’s a solution for the Housing Crisis.
I’m not used to having less political bullshit here, but I guess it could be regional.
At the federal level they’re mostly doing tax breaks for potential owners, and subsidies for builders.