The zoning as described that you're defending is a market manipulation so you're (unfairly by your own logic) excluding multiunit developers from competing against you. This zoning isn't a free market--it's a politically imposed regulation that favors current SFH owners at the expense of others. But it doesn't even favor those same owners in the long run. They'd have way more long term wealth if they allowed dense development. So they're just short sighted hoarder ding dongs.

I don't think idiotic zoning rules are libertarian. To me the libertarian stance would be to have as few regulations as possible and see if these "401k millionaires" can compete with deep pocketed developers who could spring up multiunits, make more money off that land than a single McMansion could bring, and increase the tax base, bring in more businesses now that they have a growing market, and raising property values over time. (Okay, caring about increasing the tax base isn't very libertarian.) But I guess popular libertarianism has strayed pretty far from original principles anyway.

Btw these potential farms would be better served by not being overtaken by and competing with suburban sprawl and development. Density at an inner core would hopefully help rural areas stay truly rural. It actually cruelly takes up potential farm land to force non farmers to develop in this way.

Band aids on gunshot wounds, but at least people won't freeze to death.

This situation is just fubar

Yes. I prefer a government solution that creates nice public housing. But there are two important factors when doing government housing:

1. No means testing. You need mixed income households so that it doesn’t create permanently impoverished neighborhoods. You also need buy in from the the middle class so that people want to keep the programs running.

2. It can’t be self funded. In the past housing programs in the US were set up to be self funded and had very little margin for vacancy. Basically as soon as they weren’t at max capacity they had no budget for essentials like trash removal and basic maintenance. This means that sometimes the government eats a loss. That loss is always going to be cheaper than the long term cost of caring for unhoused people.

Creating this kind of housing will flood the market with housing thereby driving down demand. It will also function as a price anchor.

This is something that requires federal funding. It won’t ever happen in the US.

North Yarmouth’s land use ordnance is actually insane. And the people who support it are the worst.

There’s a woman trying to build a couple of duplex houses right in the middle of what you’d consider downtown, and people are all up in arms that she tore down a dilapidated old farm house to do it.

They also had to cut down some nasty, scraggly, pine trees along the road, and someone has the audacity to lament the removal of the “iconic” pines. There was literally nothing iconic about them.

A Trupanion policy saved my dog's life after a porcupine incident. He had 2 open chest surgeries that would have cost 20k. We paid 2k overall.

Business entities should be prohibited from owning residential property full stop.

For private citizens, the tax burden for secondary and tertiary residential properties should increase exponentially unless they agree to rent regulation.

More than that, there’s no water to farm in North Yarmouth. I come from well drilling and a lot of north Yarmouth is bone dry unless you spend north of $25k on a well. And that’s just for domestic use…

The people on this sub read only what they want.

We should discourage non owner occupied landlording too.

Huh? How did we consent to this?

Well maybe they're not getting away but getting to.

https://www.mainehealth.org/Provider-Directory/B/Babikian-George-M

without equal.

Ok Boomer. Times have changed.

A 401k millionaire is literally wealthy off of other people's labor.

You are right that outside of emergency relief there aren't many short term actions taken by governments in regards to housing, because all of the short term options that governments have tried have risks of backfiring both short and long term.

Yeah, this is true. My previous comment was certainly too lazy and lacked nuance.

I think you’re being fooled a bit by the drone shot into thinking this is a kingdom lot camp on a remote trout pond or something. Eskatassis is a decent little pond, but I do not believe it has electricity on the Burlington side, and it is not particularly desirable real estate wise. Most of the camps are on the other end in Lowell where there is power. Cold Stream Pond is the big draw for the area. A house on Cold Stream in Webb Cove could run you 500k.

A few camps in Burlington sold during the Covid real estate boom on a nearby Pond (Saponic) for less than 100k.

I guess that would depend on what you consider long term, because things like zoning, environmental protections (of any kind), fishery and wildlife management, infrastructure, tax credits aimed at promoting particular kinds of buildings products vehicles home upgrades (heat pumps extra insulation windows that retain more heat) etc are all what I'd call long term just off the top of my head.

Government (at any level) really doesn't do long term planning at all. In fact, I can't think of a single policy or program that is long term focused, other than maybe public lands conservation.

Probably something similar to Maine...

In a very short time a whole bunch of people moved into Boise from wealthier states and drove the median price from about $240k to over $560k... that's in just under 3 years.

Meanwhile our minimum wage is still $7.25/hr and wages simply haven't kept pace.

We still do build a lot, more and more year over year, but we've just hit a limit on how much we can pump out. Partially because of the number of construction workers we have in the area, plus Covid-related shut downs, supply chain issues, developers not wanting to over leverage or carry risk, how long it took to restart construction coming out of the 2008 Recession, etc. A while bunch of reasons.

So we're behind and getting more behind, but it isn't a zoning or "NIMBY" issue either. We've capped out how much we are able to build. And over the past 6 months developers are pushing pause on projects.

It's not just a sprawl or density thing either. We're doing both. We have an entire downtown area (west downtown) which is mostly empty parking lots, that is already zoned for multiuse, multifamily, no height limit, high density development. Developers aren't bringing those projects (lots of reasons why).

So yeah, it's complicated. Far beyond what a single planner can do. But it's always fun when the actual armchair planners (like you) tell me what's what... especially when they're usually in their mid 20s and have just started watching Strongtowns or Notjustbikes over the last year or two and are now experts on everything. It makes for a good laugh.

This past snow storm!

My camp is family owned, each family member (5 of us) split the cost of the property and taxes.. Isn't that how normal folks do things?

I never understood people who have camps within an hour of their home. It doesn't feel like you're getting away when it's that close.

Yes government policy needs to balance short and long term interests, but the biggest issue is that attempts at short term reductions in costs of housing frequently backfire and either don't help short term and hurt long term or just straight up hurt both. This shit should have been addressed 5 to 10 years ago, but the best that can realistically be done is start on it now. (And it doesn't take 10 to 20 years for newly built housing to impact housing, nor does it take 10 to 20 years to build new housing).