Vancouver
Community for the city of Vancouver, BC
Yeah, article seemed to be asking homeowners if phrased another way is do you want to live with roommates? I think most people if they had the luxury would say no.
Then you got people angry at those people, which may have been the goal of the article to shift focus to also being mad at people living in their homes. As opposed to the biggest contributor of problem being individuals and corporations buying up and hoarding property they don't plan to live in and treat only as investment assets. Those are the areas that need to start having restrictions on.
Or a land use tax. Doesn't sit right with me all the entitled boomers sitting alone in their 3+ bedroom homes while we have a housing crisis.
Real tired of the suburbs being subsidized by those living in the core too.
These houses are heavily subsidized by the lowest property taxes on the continent, and one of the lowest in the world. They can enjoy the increases in land value and not have to pay their fair share in taxes. Meanwhile, these same people fight tooth and nail to make it hard to increase density for others. I have little sympathy for them. They should downsize their home if they’re not using the space.
Great, but no one is proposing what you’re opposed to.
What I’m saying is that they’re able to hoard their huge homes all to themselves, without having renters, because we subsidize them to do so. They should be paying for the increase in land value with higher taxes. Instead they get to profit from increasing land value, deny other people a place to live, and, to top it off, not pay the fair price in taxes for all that unused space. Would correcting that be “forcing” them to quarter people? Obviously not.
No, I gave you a concrete example of how we can also change the perverse incentives. Your insistence that the most plausible alternative is “forced quartering” is ridiculous.
Also, stop using sock puppet accounts to upvote yourself and downvote me. There’s no way you posted a comment and someone instantly upvoted you 1 second later.
What don't you understand? Homeowners now are financially incentivized to leave their homes empty. That doesn't have to be the case. Literally no one except you is talking about "forced quartering".
Should people own that space then if it's just going wasted? Perhaps instead of owning a 4000 SQ ft home where they only use half and refuse to rent the other half, they should sell to someone who will and then go buy a 2000 SQ ft house where they don't have to worry about it.
Call me a skeptical, but I feel like reactions like yours are the intended outcome of the article where anger is shifted towards people living in their homes who don't want roommates. And not on the actual problem of people and companies buying up properties without the intention of living in them, but renting them out or as pure investment assets to sit on and leave empty.
Ideally we wouldn’t waste anything ever, even space, but that’s not going to happen in a capitalist system where hoarding is rewarded.
That's a different argument than "people should be forced to host people in their private homes that they legally (if unethically) own."
I wouldn't want the added stress and responsibilities of dealing with potentially bad tenants..
That reflects poorly on Vancouver's tenancy laws, then. In a supply-constrained environment, should tenants get more rights at the cost of limiting supply? How much money (in terms of rent) are your tenancy rights worth?
These comments give me pause to laugh. Remember that being well off is now something to be ashamed of after working your entire life to achieve something you should be forced to give it up for the “greater good”.
Ya it’s not going to happen.