I have a question for everyone regarding potential ways to increase housing affordability in high cost areas:

What do you think would be the outcome of a policy where companies and individuals cannot rent single family housing including condos, can only rent out units in a duplex or triplex if they or an immediate family member lives in one unit, and they can only rent out fourplexes or higher. Additionally homes that are empty for over a certain number of days have an extra tax imposed to discourage having vacant homes.

I feel like that would not only decrease demand for units causing housing markets to stabilize around real local demand, increase the housing supply for people who actually want to live in the area, and encourage changes to zoning as property investors will push aggressively for zoning for more units so they can actually invest.

So more supply from decreasing non-resident demand and more supply from increasing upzoning due to economic pressure. Win-win. Only losers are people who treated their home as pure investments instead of as a commodity (which it is) and they’re usually NIMBY’s so screw em