Recent comments in /f/Maine

Squidworth89 t1_j6xzhxg wrote

Reply to comment by freeski919 in So, naive question but, how do we go about politically motivating housing costs? by [deleted]

My mum has a house in San Diego. It’s worth over a million.

The house is a shitty little 800sf from like the 60s… it’s the land.

Zoning and density is the number one issue. It’ll still be expensive though. Material and labor prices are high. But ten story buildings with hundreds of units be far more efficient.

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Majestic-Feedback541 t1_j6xz3av wrote

Reply to So, naive question but, how do we go about politically motivating housing costs? by [deleted]

Convince the state do forgo the "fair market prices" and allow no rent prices be higher that 20% of the lowest wage locally (so each town would have to evaluate what the highest rent could be). There's no reason some small town I the middle of nowhere should have rents starting at $2000 with nothing included when the highest you can earn locally is like $13.80 (or whatever minimum wage is now).

Never will happen, but it'd be nice.

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FlyingUdonMonster t1_j6xxg7w wrote

Reply to comment by Dirty_Lew in How long until someone tries to park their car on top of this "solution"? by Arsenault185

The “hazard” in this case is not the pole. It’s nothing more than good, old-fashioned human stupidity. The people who hit it were turning so early, that you can’t even say they were aiming for the wrong side of the road. They’re not even in the intersection yet, and they’re already turning.

If this were the corner of a residential block, they’d practically be steering toward someone’s porch. If they don’t know enough to pull toward the middle of an intersection before turning their wheels for a left turn, then they need to go back to driving school. It’s not Walmart’s fault people don’t know how to drive!

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FITM-K t1_j6xxfmt wrote

Reply to So, naive question but, how do we go about politically motivating housing costs? by [deleted]

I'm not an expert, and honestly I think a lot of this would need to be federal because this is a problem everywhere, not just in Maine. But some things that I think we could do:

  • Raise taxes massively on corporations that own housing
  • Raise taxes massively on individuals that own housing they don't live in at least part of the time.
  • Lower taxes for homeowners who live in the home they own, provided their income is below a certain level
  • Increase the amount of available housing by funding affordable housing development
  • Create new lower cost loan programs for first-time homebuyers, or perhaps even any home buyers who are looking to purchase a primary residence (i.e. a place they will live rather than rent)

More hardcore/probably harder to accomplish:

  • Create some kind of law (I have no idea how this would work) to make it harder for banks or at least government programs to deny loans to people if their monthly mortgage payment would be the same or lower than the rent they're currently paying. (I've heard so many stories of people who are paying over $2,000/month in rent being told by a bank that they can't afford a $1,500/month mortgage)
  • Outright ban for profit organizations from owning housing for rental. Existing companies would have to be bought out.
  • Implement universal healthcare so that when people get sick they don't also end up homeless
  • Create stricter rules for landlords about both prices (pegged to fair market rates chosen by a third party) and the services they're required to provide. Make the punishment for repeatedly violating these rules ridiculously harsh.
  • End capitalism
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