Unless they’re owned by the gov you can’t just take people’s bloody property even if it’s empty that’s why

thats fucked up

The problem in essence is that property owners would rather leave their property empty than to accept less than market value for rent. The question is not “no rent”, it’s “less rent”. Virtually anyone you find sleeping rough on the streets is going to have *some* degree of walking-around money, hardly anyone has literally *no* money. But, the owners of housing don’t want that money, they want market value. They believe that a better offer will come along, and if they accept a low offer they will miss their opportunity for the high offer. It’s a failing of people’s payoff-to-probability calculation.

And also it’s a failing of core concepts of how contemporary capitalism is executed. Not to go too deep into it, the crux is this: If they accept a low offer, their property is worth less. If a fork is sold for five dollars, it is worth five dollars. If a fork is sold for five cents, it is worth five cents. So marking down the rent on a property depreciates the property, marking it up appreciates the property. Because value is determined by common belief rather than any concrete consistencies, sellers try to fix the value of property high and buyers try to negotiate value low. So if one party wants to raise their profit, and one party wants to not sleep on a bench, they have similar ability to set the price but wildly disproportionate levels of need. It’s a conundrum, and there’s virtually no way to feasibly and achievably solve that problem.

set a reasonable level of land tax, then holding on to an empty house in an expensive area costs you money, encouraging you to rent it out or sell it.

@notyourmoderate

I cannot speak to London but, locally, if I had an apartment and I rented it out for whatever low value a displaced person could afford:

• The state would now make it illegal for me to raise that rent later when if better offer came along
  
• The state would now make it illegal for me to boot them if a better offer came along

And before I rent it out to them:

• The state makes it illegal to require a deposit bigger than 3x the monthly rent, so unless I want to risk losing value if they damage the apartment, I have to set the rent high enough that 3x the rent can renovate the entire apartment.
  

^^That doesn’t look like laws created to make it more attractive to me to rent it out to poor people, you know?

But like I said, I don’t know if London has equally stupid laws (though I’m guessing they do, those laws are super popular everywhere for some God damn reason)