Although I admire the intent here, my opinion is that it's focused on the wrong variable. Lack of "enough" income is not the root of the problem for why people get sucked into poverty and stuck there. The problem is that working people have become increasingly unable to turn their income into equity. And the number one expensive expense of "shelter" is why. So the poor people will have more money to pay rent ... woohoo. Landlords in Oakland are probably already salivating, factoring this into their next rent increase, maybe even planning to build a few more "brand new affordable housing units" in a complex that will increase both supply and price of rent. Are people ever motivated to work harder to pay their landlords more? Almost never... But give them an opportunity of ownership, and that truly turns the tables on not only what kind of work they can do, but how they spend their time and money.
I'm slowly building Ecosteader to go this direction of enabling ownership to build equity. My motivation was originally to build a land development network of people interested in green / sustainabile building, but the more I investigate this piece of the project, the more apparent it becomes that land ownership really does solve both problems in one. People who own land or homes tend to care more about environmental quality / NIMBY issues.
For the "property tax is just rent" crowd arguing that angle -- property tax on a small and undeveloped piece of land is almost nothing... build a small structure on that land and it doesn't go up by that much. In 90 percent of the US, I'd imagine that tax for the whole year is less than one month's rent in Oakland. It's when people who have massive square footage on massive acreage start complaining that property tax makes them poor that the perception gets skewed.
I'm slowly building Ecosteader to go this direction of enabling ownership to build equity. My motivation was originally to build a land development network of people interested in green / sustainabile building, but the more I investigate this piece of the project, the more apparent it becomes that land ownership really does solve both problems in one. People who own land or homes tend to care more about environmental quality / NIMBY issues.
For the "property tax is just rent" crowd arguing that angle -- property tax on a small and undeveloped piece of land is almost nothing... build a small structure on that land and it doesn't go up by that much. In 90 percent of the US, I'd imagine that tax for the whole year is less than one month's rent in Oakland. It's when people who have massive square footage on massive acreage start complaining that property tax makes them poor that the perception gets skewed.