this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Te Wai Pounamu / South Island

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Kia ora and welcome to the Te Wai Pounamu / South Island community!

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Open the URL, I self-hosted a zip file with 9 photos so you don't have to visit a website that's filled with ads.

http://rentingcrisis.nz/forum/images/chalk/activism.zip

I wrote in 20 locations around riccarton and ilam. Most of my chalk was on riccarton road or perhaps 50 metres into a side street.

Please share this file.

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[–] Alteon@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have a proposed fix for this. Hear me out. We increase the property tax by all homes owned by someone by 1% per home for the first 3 homes, and 2-3% for each home owned beyond that.

This will allow people to still purchase a second home (and a possible vacation home), whilst still being able to rent out one or make repairs prior to selling. This will vastly remove the profitability of a homeownership, and instead become a vanity vehicle for the Uber rich to only own homes for themselves vs renting (it would no longer make sense to own 6+ homes as the cost would VASTLY outweigh the income on rental units).

In New Zealand alone this would free up a minimum of around 200,000+ homes within the next 2 years.

In an effort to remove loopholes, homeownership (single-dwelling units) can no longer be owned by business entities, and homes counted towards this tax would also derive from dependents so you can't just "gift" 2-3 homes to each one of your <18y.o. children.

If anyone can think of anything else, I'm open to suggestions...

[–] Venat0r@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Increase the tax by 1% per home, so if you own 101 homes, 101% tax.

[–] Alteon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

The alternative is that we cap it at like 30% or something. It'd still be stupid expensive, and wouldn't be worth it as an investment or passive income anymore.

[–] Alteon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly. Make it financially impossible to own that many homes, or atleast make it a money pit. If your a billionaire, I guess you could conceivably do it, but it wouldn't be worth it.

[–] Ilovethebomb -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds like a good way to make renting a house almost impossible.

[–] Alteon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then maybe we figure out a way to control the rent as well? That way it's tied to the worth of the house and not to the mortgage+taxes? This way, increased taxes only hurt the owner, not the renter.

[–] SirQuackTheDuck@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In the Netherlands we have two categories of rental homes: social and "free".

Social ones have a rental price cap set by the government based on a point system (more points = higher max rent). These points are a reflection of the value given to living there. Dishwasher? That's a bunch of points, separate garden? More points. It's not perfect, but it's helping a whole bunch.

If your house is being rented for more than a certain amount per month, you're in the free section. No real requirements are present there. Renters still have very strong protections from landlord abuse through.

If you're to implement a cascading tax system which increases per house, the second group would be the one I'd target. Social housing isn't very profitable and is therefore mostly run by non-profits.