I like it in theory, but I have a couple issuesn.

I feel like it's too complicated to make average people understand how it works, the idea is simple on the surface, but I think you'd have an endless parade of people asking "so if I have resources on my land, then what happens exactly?"

And in practice I feel like it would be a difficult transition from where we are. There's a lot of opportunity to sabotage it if they can muddy the waters, and I feel like lobbyists would end up carving it up in a way that puts corporate profits first... It depends on assessing value of many things, and if you compromise that portion of the process it all falls apart. They might even sneak in easier eminent domain or something

Systems like this can't be put in place through compromise, they have to be pure or it all falls apart. Maybe someday, I just don't know how to get from here to there without a lot of middle stages

Why would they demolish houses rather than selling them? Makes no economic sense.

I have two problems with that - first, it doesn't directly address empty homes. Housing could still be commoditized, they just pay a larger tax - if they can make property prices go up even faster it would eat the difference

Second, messaging - people will hear that and ask "what does that mean for my property tax?" endlessly. It doesn't matter even if every individual would pay less, it's too mathematical and people won't do the math - they'll listen to their favorite voices tell them what it means

The nice thing about my idea is that it would crash the housing market, but it would do it by playing on a sense of justice. How is someone going to stand up and say "why can't I have a bunch of empty houses while we have homeless camps?". Many people would resist, but they have to do it while sounding like entitled assholes

Also, I think it would work for foreign investors and shell companies perfectly - see, it doesn't matter who owns the home, it matters who claims to live in it

A company doesn't live in a house. A foreigner can't say they're living their 6 months of the year when they're not in the country that long. A resident can claim a house and a secondary home (however that works out), but companies can't claim any - they need actual people to live in the home or it's vacant.

You put the fact the house is occupied first, then figure out who to tax and how much after - it doesn't matter what shell games you play, the only way around that is straight up fraud

Don't farm people. It's a home not a financial instrument. If you want riches produce something of value. In that scenario you're just jamming yourself between someone and their basic need for shelter with your hand out. A different problem than climate change to be sure, but problematic all the same.

Poverty almost certainly costs more than all this ecologically, socially, and financially. The suffering and stress of the unhoused spills over into the lives of others who interact with or observe them, increasing our collective societal stress levels, increasing hospital visits, pushing people to earlier deaths (especially, of course, among the ultra-poor), and leading to expenses involving their unplanned funerals and messier aftermaths as opposed to cleanly laid-out wills, lost/absent documentation, etc.

Poverty drives people to violence and crime when they feel unheard and ignored. What if that house could help people find some peace in their lives? Instead maybe they become the very ones who rob and wreck it out of desperation. Societies need to help all people to keep the peace.

A lot of these issues can be or begin to be solved by giving them small apartments like in Finland. Homelessness ultimately costs society more than the actual cost to home them, ironically. We'll see, I suppose: https://www.nprillinois.org/illinois/2025-03-19/housing-experts-worry-about-federal-plans-to-cut-homelessness-programs