> If people with modest budgets could afford to pack up and move to Columbia, Missouri, then the cost burden of housing could be mitigated somewhat. We'd probably see housing prices stabilize across the country.
I'm not sure if it's an issue with modest budgets or if it's an issue with job availability. Lots of people can pack up and move to Columbia, Missouri. But the jobs that exist here don't exist there.
If anything, being extremely poor helps with mobility. If you're living off disability, there's a pretty decent payoff to buying a Greyhound ticket to an area with cheaper rent, because you get the same disability check no matter where you live. Homeless people are similarly extremely mobile. It's the whole middle-class, have-to-work-for-a-living-and-my-job-is-right-here lifestyle that inhibits mobility.
> Probably, the only way to reverse this trend now is to raise property taxes on single family homes in desirable locations such that it becomes uneconomical to maintain them as such. Then these massive tracts of suburbia can be bought up by developers who are incentivized to build high-density housing. Of course, a serious proposal of this sort is likely to get you killed.
This kind of happens implicitly with a Land Value Tax, except there might be ways of implementing an LVT that wouldn't immediately displace single family homeowners.
Also, you don't need "massive tracts of suburbia" to build high-density housing; the whole point of high-density housing is that it doesn't take as much land. You can just leave most of suburbia alone.
I relocated when I was poor, single, and in college. Literally the only reason I was able to do so was because I knew a person in the town I was moving to. Without a social network, it would have been impossible for me to relocate without also becoming homeless.
People with money can find apartments or stay in hotels. People in my situation needed money for a place to stay before they could get a job.
I'm not sure if it's an issue with modest budgets or if it's an issue with job availability. Lots of people can pack up and move to Columbia, Missouri. But the jobs that exist here don't exist there.
If anything, being extremely poor helps with mobility. If you're living off disability, there's a pretty decent payoff to buying a Greyhound ticket to an area with cheaper rent, because you get the same disability check no matter where you live. Homeless people are similarly extremely mobile. It's the whole middle-class, have-to-work-for-a-living-and-my-job-is-right-here lifestyle that inhibits mobility.
> Probably, the only way to reverse this trend now is to raise property taxes on single family homes in desirable locations such that it becomes uneconomical to maintain them as such. Then these massive tracts of suburbia can be bought up by developers who are incentivized to build high-density housing. Of course, a serious proposal of this sort is likely to get you killed.
This kind of happens implicitly with a Land Value Tax, except there might be ways of implementing an LVT that wouldn't immediately displace single family homeowners.
Also, you don't need "massive tracts of suburbia" to build high-density housing; the whole point of high-density housing is that it doesn't take as much land. You can just leave most of suburbia alone.