> Why exactly would non-landowners press for improvements in their cities? The value of those improvements will be captured mainly by other parties.

Good example of this: residents in the Tenderloin (successfully) fought planting of trees because of gentrification. I can't find the original source but this [1] mentions the opposition.

Overall I found this article pretty shallow. For one it ignored recent history where American cities were in decay up until the 1990s.

A core problem here is that homeowners gnerally consider rising prices to be good. Thing is, it's only good if you cash out. Take Vancouver where a rundown Victorian might cost you $4m+. You might have bought that for $175,000 in the 90s but that $4m won't help you move to another part of Vancouver (unless you move much further out or move to something much smaller) because everything else is just as expensive.

You definitely can't trade up to a nicer area or a bigger house either. Where that gap might've been $50,000, it's now more likely $500k+.

Another problem not mentioned is Dutch Disease [2]. I'm firmly of the belief that Australia is pretty much at this point. What people don't realize is that when property prices go up so much this also affects commercial prices and those higher prices are inputs into everything you buy. You still need workers. They need more money. Again, that makes everything you buy more expensive. It seems to converge on a point where there's very little economic activity.

One reason I like NYC is that even though prices are generally high there are options for lower-income people. Sure they might not be Manhattan below 96th street (well, probably 125th at this point) but you can still leave much cheaper in the outer boroughs. You'll note that the article said "Manhattan" not "New York". That's not an accident.

Compare this to the Bay Area where all the nurses, firefighters, teachers, all the tech company ancillary workers (bus drivers, cafeteria staff, security and so on) are living 2+ hours away because that's all they can afford. Honestly, the Bay Area is just one giant middle finger to the poor.

As for solutions, it's not rent control. It's not outlawing investment properties either. People seem to forget that to rent a place to live someone else needs to own it.

I actually think the Swiss have done the best of developed countries here. The Swiss tax property speculation punitively (it may have changed but at one point it was 100% capital gains tax if you owned for less than 2 years) and made it somewhat more difficult to simply park money there in property.

That's a big problem in NYC, SF, LA, London, Sydney and the other major developed cities: capital is now global so it goes and parks in the form of real estate in major cities. That does absolutely nothing for the city.

Things I would be in favour of:

- Higher property taxes for nonresidents

- Higher property taxes for owners of unoccupied properties

- Restrictions on foreign ownership of property

- Owning property in NYC makes you a resident of NYC so all your income is taxable by NYS and NYC

- Higher capital gains on non-principal residences with a teiered structure like the Swiss where the rate goes down the longer you hold it.

- Withholding state and federal taxes on all rent earned that you can only claim back against other US expenses.

[1] https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/residents-seek-greener-tende...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease