Latest news with #rentcrisis
Irish Times
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
‘Our cities are dying': Large turnout at Dublin housing demonstration
Large crowds gathered outside the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin city on Saturday afternoon as part of an all-island housing demonstration urging the Government to act on the crisis . Led by the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), and backed by more than 80 other trade unions and organisations, protesters marched through the city centre towards Molesworth Street. Oisín Doyle (28) and Cian Lawler (25) – who both live at home with their parents – travelled from Co Carlow to take part. Reflecting on the difference between his own housing situation and that of his parents' generation, Mr Doyle said he 'would like to get back to a place where we can prioritise housing as a basic need and right for people and not something that's just for the rich'. READ MORE Catherine Dineen (25), Cian Lawler (25) and Oisin Doyle (28) attended Saturday's demonstration on housing in Dublin 'I was living up in Dublin with a friend for a while but had to move back because the rent was too expensive. My dad was a civil servant and owned a home at the age of 23 in Dublin. It was just a completely different world.' For Mr Lawler, owning a home in the future 'seems completely inaccessible'. 'I think it's disgraceful that we're viewed as a progressive and rich country but we have so many families homeless, so many people in direct provision, people in asylum that come here for a better life and are forced into these dire situations,' he said. 'All these vulture funds are allowed to come into this country and suck the life out of it. Our cities are dying.' Clare Fortune and Carmel Lyons at the protest. Photograph: PA Catherine Dineen (25) has been renting for the past seven years. 'It takes up more than half of my income every month and it's quite depressing to face into the future knowing that I probably won't be able to afford a house unless I work a corporate job that I don't really like,' she said. Traveller advocacy group Pavee Point was one of the organisations represented at Saturday's protest. Director Martin Collins describes Ireland's housing issues as 'a humanitarian crisis'. Participants in Saturday's housing protest in Dublin. Photograph: PA 'For the Traveller community, we've always had an accommodation crisis. We've been let down by this State over many, many decades. We are disproportionately represented in the homeless numbers.' Mr Collins said racism towards Travellers and Roma people poses an additional challenge in the search for housing. 'Many private landlords are not renting out to Travellers and Roma so the private sector is not even an option for us. The strategy and the response has to be more social and public housing. The Government and successive governments have failed in this regard.' [ Where will vital student housing come from? Opens in new window ] Stephen Curran (32), a member of CATU's housing demonstration subcommittee and communications officer for one of its north Dublin branches, grew up living in social housing in the suburb of Coolock. Now renting in Phibsborough, he said the housing crisis has 'forced people like myself into the private market'. 'The place I was renting when I was in college was about a quarter the cost of what I have now. The standard was so much better,' he said. 'Communities are developed when people can go somewhere and put roots down and that's why we need an eviction bam. That's why we need rents to be affordable.' Speakers from CATU's national branches emphasised what they see as the interconnectedness of social issues such as the housing crisis, discrimination against migrants and economic inequality.
Forbes
03-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Lower Property Taxes For Homeowners Can Mean Higher Rents
Lower property taxes for single-family homes and higher ones for apartments is a transfer of wealth ... More from poor renters to wealthy homeowners. Property taxes have a way of becoming complicated quickly, especially when it comes to apartment buildings. One of the arguments often made by people who own and operate multifamily housing is that property taxes form a big part of fixed costs. Rules and regulations that limit rent collection trap owners without a way to keep their buildings solvent. Worse, fixed doesn't mean they taxes are fixed at the same rate. Usually, property taxes go up and they can't be avoided. Rent is the only way to offset the costs of rising property taxes, and when rents go up, people get upset and a 'crisis' ensues. A review of a deep study of the effect of property taxes by the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMFHC) is a good place to start when trying to understand this dynamic. The review is titled, Unequal Burdens: Exploring Effective Property Tax Variation and the Regressive Nature of Apartment Property Taxes, and is a look at a deeper study of the topic by The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence called, '50-State Property Tax Comparison Study: For Taxes Paid in 2023.' That report is complex and I haven't yet fully digested it. But the NMFHC overview is good as entry point to that work and a good review of how property taxes ultimately effect rents and thus the quality of life of people with less money. It's worth restating what I've said in writing and in presentations all over the country: rental housing is a marginal business. Money coming in must match the money being spent on operations. If that is not at least in balance, the business will fail and go bankrupt. Apartments are just like a restaurant, retail outlet, or a bowling alley. If the costs of maintaining the capital assets of the building and paying staff and other costs exceed income, there is no business. In spite of this obvious fact, many people in the general public and policy makers think of rental housing as different, passive income. Property owners simply collect the rent checks, deposit them, and go back to the beach. Or, as the NMHC post puts it, 'all else equal, higher effective apartment property taxes increase overhead costs for housing providers; this translates into providers being forced to raise rents to offset the cost, impacting the project's viability and/or affordability levels.' It's repetitive, but saying more than once and in different ways is for emphasis but especially to counter moves like banning eviction during the pandemic; that move meant many people who lost their jobs couldn't pay rent, but local jurisdictions didn't stop collecting property taxes. And often, those property taxes fall more heavily on apartment buildings. First, the way local governments tax property favors single-family homes. Often, single-family homeowners or those paying mortgages benefit from lower assessments and many exemptions like those for senior citizens or veterans. Those lower rates and exemptions end up being shifted to commercial properties and apartments. Another challenge is that taxes vary by jurisdiction, and the Lincoln study looks at all 50 states. There are some highly localized factors that impact taxation in different jurisdictions. Some states and local jurisdictions rely heavily on property taxes while others lean more on income or sales tax. Interestingly, jurisdictions with higher valuations – places with lots of properties that are assessed to be worth more money – can have lower tax rates. That is, when there is inflation in the housing market, property tax rates can effectively go down because the same money can be raised as a percentage of tax without raising rates. For example, a building with a value of $1 million dollars and a tax rate of 5% would generate $50,000 in revenue while a property with the same rate but a value of $100,000 would only generate $5,000. State and local governments can also boost taxes to cover deficits or more spending, and they can impose property classifications which hit commercial and apartment properties harder than single-family. This classification practices grinds against policy directives that those same governments might have on sustainable growth. Taxing single-family properties less encourages more inefficient land use and punishes dense housing with higher costs, costs that get passed on to renters. The Lincoln and Fiscal Excellence quantifies this vividly. Higher property taxes for apartments and lower taxes for single family mean higher rents subsidize ... More single-family equity. As the NMHC post describes, 'the extent to which apartment buildings subsidize homesteads can be captured by the ratio of the effective tax rate on apartments to that of homesteads. Doing so produces an average 'apartment-homestead classification ratio' of 1.44, meaning apartments pay an effective tax rate 44% higher on average than homesteads.' These ratios reflect deliberate policy decisions, pushing people to buy houses rather than rent even when they can't afford a mortgage. The irony of this is that while state and local politicians fret over a 'housing crisis' their property tax polices often speak louder than their speeches about housing, ultimately pushing up rents while favoring those with more money who can afford a mortgage. In the end, it is a transfer of wealth from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest. Whatever positive urges elected officials have toward reducing regulation must be coupled with, even alloyed with better property tax policy. The benefits of land use and zoning reforms given with one hand, can easily be taken away with the other in the form of excessive property taxes.
CBC
26-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Metro Vancouver non-profit thrift stores say they're facing tough times as rents continue to rise
Social Sharing The operators of non-profit thrift stores in Metro Vancouver say the region's expensive real estate market is making it difficult for them to make money, and that's keeping them from being able to help their communities. Burnaby Association for South East Side (BASES) Family Thrift Store in Burnaby, B.C., says it will soon have to close because of increasingly unaffordable rent. "We know we can run a successful business. We've done it for 12 years and we certainly can continue that," said BASES president Peggy Woodruff. "But we just can't afford the rent." Woodruff says her thrift store has raised more than $1 million for children and families in her community. But after all these years, she's getting ready to close the store's doors. Rent for the store started at $10 a square foot when it first opened more than a decade ago, she says. It's now being raised to $40 a square foot. WATCH | Thrift stores face eviction amid rent hikes: Metro Vancouver's soaring rents forcing non-profits out of business 10 hours ago Duration 2:17 A beloved Burnaby, B.C., thrift store is getting set to close up shop amid a major rent hike. It joins a long list of establishments struggling to stay afloat amid Metro Vancouver's real estate crisis. Sohrab Sandhu reports. Woodruff says for the last 18 months her organization has tried looking for another space to operate its business. But so far, the search has not been successful. "We've looked at over probably 80 properties in Burnaby," she said. "The retail space is very, very tight." 'The profit is completely gone' In Surrey, SEVA Thrift Foundation board member Raj Arneja says the SEVA Thrift Store donated more than $100,000 to the community in its first seven years of operation. But the store's rent has nearly tripled since it first opened, and it hasn't had any extra money to hand out in the last two years. "The profit is completely gone," Arneja said. To help, the store became a non-profit-organization and last year it was granted charity status. Arneja says she hopes that can help them access grants. She says business has been picking up, and she's hopeful for the future. She says the store doesn't just give money, it also offers a valuable space for its 60 or so volunteers to gain work experience and build community. "It's like a nice stepping stone, volunteering with us — a stepping stone into any kind of career," Arneja said. Rent control vs. creating more supply Last year a city councillor in New Westminster proposed special economic zones to help small businesses amid rapid development, increasing land values and rising commercial rents. But Andrey Pavlov, a finance professor at Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business, says commercial rent control is not a solution — the focus should be increasing the real estate supply. "We need to make it easy and fast and safe to invest in commercial, residential real estate so that people do that in large numbers," Pavlov said. "And then we build a lot more than we currently have."
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Metro Vancouver's soaring rents forcing non-profits out of business
A beloved Burnaby, B.C., thrift store is getting set to close up shop amid a major rent hike. It joins a long list of establishments struggling to stay afloat amid Metro Vancouver's real estate crisis. Sohrab Sandhu reports.
CBC
26-05-2025
- Business
- CBC
Metro Vancouver's soaring rents forcing non-profits out of business
A beloved Burnaby, B.C., thrift store is getting set to close up shop amid a major rent hike. It joins a long list of establishments struggling to stay afloat amid Metro Vancouver's real estate crisis. Sohrab Sandhu reports.
