> But I call b.s. on that. Residents would be able to afford new construction and maintenance if those things had lower price pressure.
Including those on minimum wage? Including secondary education students who have no income? Including (international/visiting) folks on a (consulting) contract that may not want to settle in the location?
There are many situations in which rental housing is the solution for people.
> They should need to do a substantially better job at maintaining and increasing the value of real estate to justify owning it instead of a resident.
"Increasing the value of real estate" is not the only metric to judge things by. Proving a valuable service to the public is another.
> There are many situations in which rental housing is the solution for people.
Then we can address that via rental vouchers to offset the taxes.
Real estate has the same problem as healthcare, in that it's an enormously complicated system, where any adjustment always has negative outcomes.
However, I agree with parent that the central and most critical failing is -- we are not incentivizing owner-occupied home construction at an accessible price point.
And a critical component of that is decoupling {build and sell to commercial landlord} and {build and sell to occupying owner}. The former will always be able to deploy more capital, and thus drive up the asset price to levels the latter can't afford.
And just to make it explicit: this is independent of density. You can have dense development that is still owner occupied (individual units).
Including those on minimum wage? Including secondary education students who have no income? Including (international/visiting) folks on a (consulting) contract that may not want to settle in the location?
There are many situations in which rental housing is the solution for people.
> They should need to do a substantially better job at maintaining and increasing the value of real estate to justify owning it instead of a resident.
"Increasing the value of real estate" is not the only metric to judge things by. Proving a valuable service to the public is another.