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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2992 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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For what it's worth, as a renter I didn't pay property tax, whereas as an owner, I have to. If you count people who are renting as residents of the area, per capita tax income (at least on the local level) has to increase. Note that I'm in Canada, so it may not work the exact same way as it does in the states.

You also have the option of...not building 1,000,000 homes, and instead building a much smaller number. There are certain phenomenon that only occur when the number gets super large. Imagine, for example, that the town has a university that admits around 30,000 students at a given time. Instead of having them all as renters, you could build student housing for cheap up to say 15,000 units, and capture the value of people who would be there anyways. Regardless of what you think about universities, the modal university attendee is probably better behaved than the modal low income newcomer (and they would have a lot of incentive to capture those properties, as they are there anyways).

Now, if you're willing to use #unethicalLifeHacks (which as a government, you always are), you can pull some whacky shenanigans to capture extra value out of 'low income' housing. A very simple approach would be to make the 'market value' of the house be much greater than the value that it was sold for (for example, the government offers the house for sale at $100,000, which comes out to roughly a $600 monthly payment at 5% interest. After a year, the property assessment claims that it would be worth $600,000, which at a tax rate of 1% would be $6000 a year, or $500 a month. $600 + $500 < $1600 for rent, so you've managed to transform the rent seeking behaviour of the landlord into rent seeking for yourself, instead - and if there's one thing a government loves, it's more money.)

as a renter I didn't pay property tax

Yes you do, abstractly via your rent price

The Ontario Trillium tax benefit even pays you back for some of it

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