This is where we can track news and updates relating to Banning Private Equity Firms from Buying Up Our Homes.
A worthwhile task. I have just registered for an educational event where I expect to learn about finding out if single home deeds have redlining limitations still written into them and if so, how to have them removed. Even thought these limitations are not enforceable anyway. Not the same as preventing PEs from buying our homes but it’s in the Housing sector conversation.
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Here’s the Google Doc from tonight’s meeting:
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They’re buying everything!
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Endstage Capitalism. The difference between me and Cenk and that he believes Capitalism can be reformed whereas I believe it needs to be replaced by cooperativism. He means well, and I can work with that, but he’s wrong.
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This is a very worthwhile objective; but it will NOT be enough to restore the housing supply to a level where homes become affordable again. You have to ALSO support statewide protections to establish PLANNED microhousing communities (discussed here -link…) California and New York would be great places to put this into effect, given the now ridiculously escalated cost of housing in those states that also have a high ratio of homelessness (are you listening, Katie Porter, who is running for governor in California?!)
The reason for a housing shortage is NOT just driven by corporations; it is also coming from [MANY MANY] non-corporate owners of residential housing stock who took on ginormous mortgages and now feel they are entitled to a big payday when they sell their units. They do NOT want to see low-cost PLANNED microhousing communities being set up nearby that would blow out the sale price of the homes they bought! (so they work with politicos to sabotage such communities…)
I could easily see some individual speculators looking to flip -oh, excuse me; homeowners- not liking this. But are we to continue to have the ridiculous levels of homelessness in California and New York because of this extreme speculation?? Some in real estate want to blame it away on a drug/fentanyl crisis, but the biggest reason for homelessness we are seeing is a mismatch between jobs with a more prevalent burger-flipping pay and the luxe prices of housing, be it rental or mortgage-based.
In urban areas you also need warehousing taxes on rental units that are off the market for more than six months (giving landlords time to make improvements…), and penalties for “sockpuppet rentals” to dodge enforcement of such a tax. Want to speculate on rentals by keeping them off the market? Since it’s a scarce resource, there will have to be a price for that!
Taking it from a mere anecdotal discussion to one supported by studies…
This is not far off from what Newsom is trying to do in California. Rather than do the heavy lifting of addressing the direct causes of an overpriced housing inventory, just make being homeless illegal…