[antisthenes]

The ship has sailed on that one.

You would have to somehow transform 50+ years of suburban sprawl into a higher-density, less car dependent living arrangement, that's also _cheaper_ than the current one, and affordable to e.g. restaurant and retail workers.

[AussieWog93]

While you've described the ideal case, I don't think it's true that the ship has sailed on affordable housing.

At least in Australia, most of the increase in value comes from speculators and investors taking advantage of very generous tax concessions (negative gearing, capital gains tax reductions, reserve bank handing out low-interest loans to property investors).

Rental vacancy rates in Sydney and Melbourne have remained pretty much static over the past decade (excluding COVID), yet prices have soared by 60-70%.

[imtringued]

In theory capital gains on land should be taxed 100%. The problem is that you still need people to do things like renovate the house. Valuing the land separately is difficult. It's much easier to just set a fixed rate based on what the land is zoned for which means straight up land value taxes are easier to administer.