If you take things away from rich people by force (and by things I mean an empty apartment that serves no purpose other than to gain in value), those same rich people will levy armies against you to reclaim what they lost.
If you undermine what they have by building more, it’s harder for them to justify waging war with you as no capital theft has taken place. All that they might experience is a slight deflationary force that might encourage them to rent out what they have at at a fair market value in order to keep up with the newer alternatives
With rent control and new building standards its more economical to write them off as a loss for taxes than renovate. This is where its would be ideal to give tax breaks/looser rent control to make them habitable.
Its way more eco friendly to fix what we already have in place than build new. Not that I’m against building new but if we attacked on both fronts that would be 110k homes for people vs 50k.
its more economical to write them off as a loss for taxes than renovate
There’s a simple solution for that. If a house sits empty for more than six months, it becomes the property of the city. Maybe add a provision that lets the owners surrender unoccupied houses willingly in return for a small flat compensation. Problem solved.
Becoming the property of the city will be a nightmare to deal with. Instead just crank up the property tax to 25% of the property value per year for any year the property is empty more than 6 months.
That’ll fix the issue almost immediately.
It’ll also force rents lower because you can’t afford to wait for a tenant who can pay exorbitant rents.
In the Netherlands we used to have people who broke into empty houses and lived there. Now we have “anti-kraak” rentals… basically if you’re going to leave a place empty for a long time you do short term rent (like a month or two) so that it doesn’t sit empty.
The government steals property all the time, it’s just called eminent domain. And to be fair, these aren’t Ma and Pa Kent who own these apartments - it’s almost all enormous companies worth multiple billions of dollars, keeping those $5k/year apartments at that price point because OCCASIONALLY someone will make enough to rent one. I think “hey either it needs to be rented out in some capacity within six months or we’re gonna take it and do it for you” is a good solution - sure, it’s Tammany Hall government all over again, but since that seems to be the only thing that corporations respond to now, it’s a good solution.
Complex problem, but your right abou not beingt the ma and pa owners I can’t math today, but if a tax write off is going to be the more profitable option, you’ve got a LOT of other high tax high earning income coming in.
New York City received more than seven million applications last year for about 10,000 affordable apartments. But despite the extraordinary demand, the units often remain empty for months as a plodding government bureaucracy selects potential tenants.
(…)
On Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration announced a host of changes designed to reduce the median amount of time these apartments remain empty to less than three months.
TBF this is not the 60k you’re refering to. There’s other articles taking the view of landlord associations and I must admit they make some sense even after discounting for bias.
They have 60k+ apartments that are empty. How about we start there?
If you take things away from rich people by force (and by things I mean an empty apartment that serves no purpose other than to gain in value), those same rich people will levy armies against you to reclaim what they lost.
If you undermine what they have by building more, it’s harder for them to justify waging war with you as no capital theft has taken place. All that they might experience is a slight deflationary force that might encourage them to rent out what they have at at a fair market value in order to keep up with the newer alternatives
So why are they empty? There’s got to be more to what your saying.
With rent control and new building standards its more economical to write them off as a loss for taxes than renovate. This is where its would be ideal to give tax breaks/looser rent control to make them habitable.
Its way more eco friendly to fix what we already have in place than build new. Not that I’m against building new but if we attacked on both fronts that would be 110k homes for people vs 50k.
There’s a simple solution for that. If a house sits empty for more than six months, it becomes the property of the city. Maybe add a provision that lets the owners surrender unoccupied houses willingly in return for a small flat compensation. Problem solved.
Becoming the property of the city will be a nightmare to deal with. Instead just crank up the property tax to 25% of the property value per year for any year the property is empty more than 6 months.
That’ll fix the issue almost immediately.
It’ll also force rents lower because you can’t afford to wait for a tenant who can pay exorbitant rents.
In the Netherlands we used to have people who broke into empty houses and lived there. Now we have “anti-kraak” rentals… basically if you’re going to leave a place empty for a long time you do short term rent (like a month or two) so that it doesn’t sit empty.
Forcing people to lose money to restore a lame asset or they steal your property… Yeah that won’t fly.
That’s the fun part. It’s not ‘stealing’ when the state does it.
Uh, I hate to break it to you, but this is exactly what’s happening in places to get land for data centers.
https://fortune.com/2026/07/19/data-center-eminent-domain-public-use/
The government steals property all the time, it’s just called eminent domain. And to be fair, these aren’t Ma and Pa Kent who own these apartments - it’s almost all enormous companies worth multiple billions of dollars, keeping those $5k/year apartments at that price point because OCCASIONALLY someone will make enough to rent one. I think “hey either it needs to be rented out in some capacity within six months or we’re gonna take it and do it for you” is a good solution - sure, it’s Tammany Hall government all over again, but since that seems to be the only thing that corporations respond to now, it’s a good solution.
Complex problem, but your right abou not beingt the ma and pa owners I can’t math today, but if a tax write off is going to be the more profitable option, you’ve got a LOT of other high tax high earning income coming in.
When you say “won’t”…
It’s not like that’s the only thing Mamdani’s admin does, but you had to spoil a good joke didn’t you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/nyregion/mamdani-nyc-affordable-housing.html
TBF this is not the 60k you’re refering to. There’s other articles taking the view of landlord associations and I must admit they make some sense even after discounting for bias.
But it’s a start.