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from the for-$10K/year-I'll-make-a-house-look-lived-in dept.
Vancouver, suffering from a near-zero supply of homes available for rent, plans to slap investors sitting on vacant properties with a new tax in an effort to make housing more accessible in Canada's most-expensive property market.
The levy, which would start in January, may be as high as 2 percent of the property's assessed value, Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas, the city's general manager of community services, told reporters Wednesday. That would mean a minimum C$20,000 ($15,000) annual payment for the typical C$1 million-plus detached home in Vancouver based on July 2015 assessment data, the most recent available.
"Vancouver is in a rental housing crisis," said Mayor Gregor Robertson, whose announcement follows a separate measure by the province in July to impose a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers. "Dangerously low vacancy rates across the city are near zero."
Vancouver is penalizing property owners for not renting empty buildings.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday September 16 2016, @03:46AM
Fuck the investors. Capitalism oscillates between periods of expansion and contraction, where hellbound shithead billionaires will suck up 100 foreclosed on homes with families in them during contraction. That's after the banks refused to do what they were directed to do, and perform home loan modifications, and instead deliberately sold it the billionaires for profit. That's how income inequality is reaching critical levels where the 99% have no savings, no assets, no ability to afford legal defenses, tons of debts, and desperate work forces. It's one of the ways they control and manipulate the markets, they being the elite 1%.
Single foreign investors, or even local ones? Hardly. What you find now in cities where rent has been completely fucked up (Norther California is 40% over the last 5 years with no wage increases), is that investors have gobbled up many houses at a time multiplying the effect for every greedy fucker trying to make a killing of the misfortune of the masses.
It's not like it is really one huge market. With shills and offshore corps it becomes owned by so few people, that collusion is easily possible to manipulate the markets. You think those owners are exercising their freedom by choosing not rent deliberately? Why? I can see some cases and situations, but not the majority of unoccupied properties. Those are either owned by the bank, which I don't exactly agree with forcing them to rent them, are owned by investors, are owned by people that wanted to live there.
Whoever these people are, they are manipulating the markets for financial gain by allowing rental prices to go up. Without a measure like this, they were well on their way to substantially higher rents.
We need laws like this to force property to be used as it was intended during zoning, and strong rent control laws to bring rents to no more than 40% of the average prevailing wage. Where I am, the rents are over 100% of the average prevailing wage, which means nobody around me can afford to live alone unless they're drug dealers, shitty executives, or been in their home for 30 years.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @06:27AM
First, we allow all of our good-paying manufacturing jobs to be exported.
Next, we spend what money we have left buying stuff from the people who now -do- produce stuff.
Now, those (Chinese) folks have to figure out what to do with all that money we gave them.
(They can't buy any of -OUR- manufactured goods because, again, we exported all of our manufacturing jobs.)
So, what's left for them to buy with their giant piles of money?
West Coast real estate.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Friday September 16 2016, @11:20AM
Try to remember that houses and other good things are very often provided by investors. Haters like you espouse the ideology of death, because if you had your way there would be no producers, only consumers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @01:48PM
People have been building homes for centuries before debt-based currency and fraction reserve banking became a thing.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday September 16 2016, @07:03PM
No, I HATE investors that are psychotically avaricious to the point they will collude, manipulate markets, and *CAUSE* misery in others for their own economic gain. When you have a group raise rents deliberately over 100% of the prevailing wage, investing ceases to be a harmless economic activity and becomes one destructive to the community. San Fransisco is cratering right now with the "help" (wage slaves) barely able to hold on, and instead commuting longer and longer hours into the city. That is one example of what happens when investors are not regulated, and the entire system is incentivized to obtain profits at all costs, with those costs quite often being human misery and despair.
Investment is not intrinsically evil, nor is it intrinsically Capitalist. However, what the investors are doing with their money IS evil, and very much Capitalist.
If they were "playing the game" without colluding to manipulate the supply, then the homes would simply be on market. To keep them off market is to deliberately manipulate the value of your renaming properties that are on market.
For the record, if I had my way, "producers" (a misnomer) would actually live up that fucking myth of trickle down anything. You're clearly calling investors producers of something other than misery for the working class, which is flat out false. All the *employers* need to do is PAY A FUCKING LIVING WAGE. All the arguments cease because now the workers have enough resources to live, which by the way, also means they have enough resources to be CONSUMERS. A Living Wage means they have enough to cover the basics, which is the new foundation of worker pay. You differentiate, or compensate for higher education and experience, by paying above that. The difference being disposable income that over time can turn regular workers into not just CONSUMERS, but ALSO INVESTORS THEMSELVES.
So, pull your head out of your ass. There can be no consumers when the race to the bottom of how low we can pay workers, and then also raise the prices of all commodities and services, continues unabated. A Living Wage tied to prevailing rent and commodity/service prices ensures that no matter how hard they "game the system" it will balance itself out at the next "refresh" of that index, which can occur every 3 months. That's the evil part; When investors and employers manipulate the market place to create desperate pools of workers willing to settle for less while simultaneously being squeezed on all sides for whatever pennies are thrown to them by the executives.
It has a cost. What you see in Wells Fargo is that kind of culture run amuck, with the low paid wage slaves performing crime to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the executives with $125 million dollar compensation packages complain about how they can't get any trustworthy help anymore.
It's not what they are called, it's what they do that matters.
I don't explicitly call for death, but that it the only course left. When income equality becomes so severe that nearly every worker in America lives materially deprived and suffocating under steadily rising prices and steadily lowering wages, there will be death. It's not rocket science or blind aggression, but simple human nature when you've finally had enough. So either the "producers" figure out that they need to pay us fairly, or there WILL BE civil war and we will rise up and kill everyone at the top.
If you want an ideology of death, here is one:
Anytime 75% of the population agrees that income inequality has reached unsustainable levels, the top 1% as indicated by the records of wealth, have 10% of their wealth immediately assigned as bounty for their assassination. After they die, the remaining 90% is immediately pushed into infrastructure, social programs, and job creation. Which is what the 1% should have been doing in the first place. Afterwards, the new 1% has 20 years before a new vote can be called by the new 99%.
Now, THAT is an ideology of death ;)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday September 17 2016, @12:56AM
I would enjoy burying you with insults, but that won't accomplish anything. So let me just say that I sincerely wish there was a way for you and I to live on separate planets.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday September 17 2016, @01:24AM
Hah!
Well, if things continue the way they are, you will not have to worry about us living on separate planets. We'll most likely be dead in the ensuing civil war.
The sad part is, you don't have to trade insults. Just support a living wage, which is not some socialist ideal at all. It's the simple request that a day's work, by anyone, provide them with a minimum standard of living.
Who would want to live on your shitty planet anyways? The elites will rule over a slave class below just like this planet, since you will not change a damn thing will you?
Yeah. I really wish I could send you all to another planet and let the rest of us here willing to live in harmony and peace alone from you barbaric empathy-less wastes of flesh.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.