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Zoning laws affect what you can build where. But a quicker route to increasing the supply of homes (this lowering prices) is to levy high taxes on single family homes that the owner does not live in.
Single family homes have become an investment opportunity for corporations and wealthy individuals. When vast sums find their way into a market, prices can go up sharply. Corporations, private equity funds, and the like cannot inhabit a home. And a person can only inhabit one primary residence (>50%). So if people (or companies) want to own homes as rental properties, they'd pay higher taxes. Some would sell those extra homes, reducing Demand and putting them on the market, increasing supply. The additional taxes some would pay to keep the extra single family homes could fund housing-related programs like section 8, redevelopment of depressed areas and so forth.
Can anyone with experience in housing policy with in? Would this work? Aside from pissing off rich people?
In most states there's already an additional tax for not living in the home in the form of not receiving the homestead exemption.
Expanding the homestead exemption could be part of the solution.
Perhaps, but the prevalence of single family homes is a huge problem itself. They generally bring in less in tax dollars than they cost the city to maintain, since it's more road, sidewalk, sewer, etc. for one household. My tax dollars as someone who lives in a multifamily building subsidize others in my city who have one household on much larger properties. I don't want these people to have more tax breaks and incentivize more of that to be built.
This is a huge problem with suburban devlopments (single family homes, strip malls, box stores). Almost all of them rely on denser parts of the cities to maintain themselves. Unlike the denser parts of cities, the commercial zoning often struggles when the original business leaves, unlike denser areas that are more flexible. Not only do these developments cost more to build and maintain, they often don't provide for as long and can be costly/resistant to redevelpment due to suburban zoning and NIMBYism.
My tax dollars for a single family home are far above that paid for a tiny apartment, and that’s as it should be
The issue is there's nothing stopping house owners from increasing the rent they charge to cover their costs. There needs to be enforced rent control in order for the profit margin to be squeezed.
That's a different argument. The point here is that extra money (even if it is paid by the renter) then goes into the city funds to build more high density housing and more public transit to get from lower density areas to the higher density areas.
The consequences of that would be tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people like me quickly losing their place to live. Lots of people can only afford to live right now because they're fortunate enough to know somebody with a second place which they can rent at below market rates. Most of the neighborhood I live in was bought and built in the late 80s, and is now the de facto retirement plan for dozens of military members who bought these places. No one idea fixes anything entirely, but I think the zoning ideas are the most widely and quickly effective, without destroying lives of average people.
The reverse would actually happen.
Home prices without corporate/wealthy investments would quickly fall due to the increase in supply and a decrease in the purchasing power of the average buyer. They would eventually stabilize at prices that people like you could afford.
Rent for multi-unit buildings would also fall as more renters could afford to buy a home.
Those who purchased homes as rental units would still be able to recoup most of their investment by selling the place. They could then invest somewhere that is not hoarding resources and causing other people to suffer.
You wouldn't lose your place to live. Your place to live would become for sale on the open market for someone like you to buy, and if tens (hundreds?) of thousands of those places went up for sale at once then someone like you could afford to buy it. Having necessary housing for other humans be a retirement plan is kinda fucked up.