surrealchemist t1_iua95p2 wrote on October 29, 2022 at 7:46 PM

Reply to comment by twinkcommunist in Another building bites the dust... gentrification is real out here. by Towers_Oh_My27

There are other types of housing though the city can encourage. Things like renter co-ops, low income units, non-profit housing. They can put caps on rent if they wanted. The recent push to put extra tax on vacant properties is good as well if it can prevent landlords from sitting on a unit to wait to replace it with a higher rent tenant.

twinkcommunist t1_iuaa0zo wrote on October 29, 2022 at 7:53 PM

I'm fine with those other things if theres actually enough money behind any of them to actually get them built. Price caps usually have really bad second order effects. I don't think a vacancy tax would be useful because less than 6% of units in Newark are vacant which usually just means that landlords wait a month or two between tenants; things aren't sitting empty long term. (Especially in a city that has a lot of structures that aren't habitable but would count as vacant because they have walls and a roof). I'd rather just have a universal higher property tax that goes to a public housing developer that builds apartments to rent slightly above the cost of maintenance.