I actually meant via a lottery system, not armed competition. Paying the guards when the city says someone else gets the house is not a real thing. And demolishing housing could be fixed by going off zoning.
You’re proposing to reassign millions of dollars of property based on various levels of evidence for whether someone was physically present? That’s basically the 90s in Russia.
It’s certainly a neat fictional universe. I imagine everyone who can afford to would live in a hotel, leaving the scramble of defending your property to those who can’t. Also, fraud. Lots of fraud.
Simple, comrade. 15 years you work on potato farm and trade ration-booklet for wood and drywall. You pay for and possibly build with your own two hands nice home for hard working fellow comrade to live in, and you ask in return they pay you some amount to help you recoup your investment.
After a couple years, nice family leaves, so you spend long time to find another nice family to fit into the house you worked hard to provide. Instead Kommisar come along, give house to homeless in name of proletariat. Social welfare bureau hold lottery, and the neighborhood violent drunk under the bridge is ecstatic his number came up, as he was very sad he no longer has home to beat wife in. Much vodka is drunk while copper piping is gutted and appliances scrapped to dealers in nearby Ossetia.
Sit back and cry: I work on potato farm for 15 years to build nice second home to house hard working families! Instead government create lottery and hands to drunk who destroys house in only 15 days. Decide to stop trying. Start drinking everyday. Become a drunk yourself, enter the lottery, now you gut houses of others to survive. Process repeats -- now all units look like Grozny in the late 90s.
The point is that, if you want to incentivize landlords to rent out places, this does this. Other people hear your story and rent it out to a responsible person instead of waiting for a "nice family". Or they auction it off in the time they have and pocket the money.
Responsible people who don't rip up housing are sought after and pay a reasonable rental rate. People who buy and sit on property are taken out of the system. A new equilibrium is reached and most people take reasonable care of their rental properties they are given because they don't want to have to enter lotteries that will likely end them up in a slum. Homeless people end up in better than the street.
Either I'm being far less clear than I think or you're being deliberately obtuse.
Everyone has a primary residence. I'm saying, if the only goal is to force landlords to rent out houses, simply have any residential property without at least one person identifying it as their primary residence given away by the state, ideally in a lottery. It would only change things for landlords. And I don't know what "fraud" would be engaged in. I suppose a couple could rent two apartments only needing one, but I don't see why a landlord would do that as opposed to renting to someone who presumably wants it and would pay money.
> don't see why a landlord would do that as opposed to renting to someone who presumably wants it and would pay money
You’re not sure they will pay the money or not trash the place. Same reason landlords are hesitant about renting in the real world.
In any case, this would be defeated by enlisting family members as back-up primary residents. (As in the old world, when property rights were enforced at sword point, sucks to be someone without a dependable family.) Though, again, the wealthy would likely opt out of renting and favour not owning or just own a single massive house and opt out of renting.
The fraud would be in people lying about their primary residences. Also, people lying about others’ lack of primary residence to appropriate their homes for their cronies. The injured family would be homeless while fighting for their property back, which somewhat compromises their ability to engage.
> this would be defeated by enlisting family members as back-up primary residents
I don't see how. The family members still have to live somewhere. Oh no, the person rents to their kid as opposed to a stranger! It still means that wherever that kid was going to live otherwise isn't rented out to them and is on the market.
> fraud would be in people lying about their primary residences.
Yeah, I don't see how. Everyone gets one. So, if you don't need a home and are responsible maybe you get hired to rent out an empty place? It doesn't scale.
> people lying about others’ lack of primary residence to appropriate their homes for their cronies.
That's stupid. It seems just as possible as people lying to get your bank account. There are all kinds of ways that people have to let the government know where their primary residence is.
> wherever that kid was going to live otherwise isn't rented out to them and is on the market
The kid could have been living at home. One spouse in one house, one spouse in the other. Et cetera.
> just as possible as people lying to get your bank account
You're proposing an ad hoc centralized mechanism for expropriating and re-assigning a multi-trillion dollar asset class. This has clear and one-way precedence in history.
> he kid could have been living at home. One spouse in one house, one spouse in the other.
Yes. If the "super-fraud" is that 18 year olds move out to unclaimed apartments or that couples can have a vacation house, I am remarkably okay with that.
> You're proposing an ad hoc centralized mechanism for expropriating and re-assigning a multi-trillion dollar asset class. This has clear and one-way precedence in history.
Except for the ad-hoc nature, the fact that property records and ownership (as well as lists of people's primary residences) are already centralized, that centralization and decentralization of real estate have precedence within the same society at different times, I totally agree. So I guess that's "multi-trillion dollar asset class" I agree with.
