Land Value Tax

RSF responds to the New York Times article titled “The ‘Georgists’ Are Out There, and They Want to Tax Your Land”

by RSF Staff

“As one-clause headlines summarizing century old movements go, “Georgists want to tax your land!” is not the worst, as it succinctly describes how Georgism would impact one particularly literate and tuned in class of people – landowners. But it misses the most important piece of… Read More »RSF responds to the New York Times article titled “The ‘Georgists’ Are Out There, and They Want to Tax Your Land”

Addressing Common Concerns and Building Support for Detroit’s Land Value Tax Plan

by RSF Staff

Exploring the criticisms of Detroit’s Land Value Tax Plan: Do they have merit? Detroit’s Land Value Tax (LVT) plan has generated considerable discussion within the City and beyond. Many support the plan for its potential to transform Detroit’s tax system, promote development, and provide tax… Read More »Addressing Common Concerns and Building Support for Detroit’s Land Value Tax Plan

Anticipating the Impact: Detroit’s Land Value Tax Implementation

by RSF Staff

Detroit, like many urban centers, faces the challenge of balancing the need for steady, predictable tax revenues with the desire to promote economic growth and equitable development. The Land Value Tax (LVT) plan proposed by Mayor Duggan seeks to address these challenges head-on. Drawing upon… Read More »Anticipating the Impact: Detroit’s Land Value Tax Implementation

Detroit’s Land Value Tax Plan: A Game Changer for Tax Bills

by RSF Staff

Detroit’s current tax system has long been a subject of criticism, with homeowners burdened by some of the highest property taxes in Michigan. Paradoxically, because land values are low, the owners of the City’s many abandoned buildings, scrap yards, and parking lots face low taxes,… Read More »Detroit’s Land Value Tax Plan: A Game Changer for Tax Bills

Exploring Detroit’s Land Value Tax Plan: A Revenue-Neutral Approach

by RSF Staff

Building on the lessons of the roughly 20 Pennsylvania municipalities and school districts that have made use of Land Value Taxes (LVT), Detroit’s Mayor Duggan introduced a proposal to bring the policy to his City in May 2023, during the Mackinac Policy Conference. This plan,… Read More »Exploring Detroit’s Land Value Tax Plan: A Revenue-Neutral Approach

Land Value Tax plan takes shape in Detroit, as negotiations continue

by RSF Staff

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s plan to implement a Land Value Tax continues moving forward, albeit with a new timeline. Since May 31, when Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan unveiled a plan to introduce a Land Value Tax, Michigan tongues have been wagging furiously. Declaring the current… Read More »Land Value Tax plan takes shape in Detroit, as negotiations continue

How does a land value tax shift work in practice?

by Stephen Hoskins

With so many cities grappling with rising rents, insufficient supply of new housing and widening inequality, many are starting to consider the ways in which these challenges could be mitigated by shifting the tax base onto land values. In a previous blog post, we explained… Read More »How does a land value tax shift work in practice?

Privilege in the Wasted Land: How Wealthy Investors Hide Behind LLCs and Speculate on Vacant and Underutilized Land in New York City

by Stephen Hoskins

Over the past few months, we have published a series of articles which explore the presence of vacant and underutilized land in New York City and the role of Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) in the city’s housing market. Today, we publish our ground-breaking report, Privilege in the Wasted Land, which examines the factors associated with these phenomena and clearly establishes that LLC investors are over-represented among owners of both vacant and underutilized land in NYC.

Earth Rent: The Future of the Dutch Ground Lease System

by Rinske Bijl

After Amsterdam, Rotterdam is the largest Dutch municipality in terms of population. Since the 1970s, this municipality has given out almost all of its new land under ground lease conditions. One of the goals of the ground lease system was to allow the entire community to benefit from the increase in land value, instead of just the individual land owner.

In 2003, however, this objective was explicitly dismissed in Rotterdam. From then on, the increase in value of the land would no longer be collected by the community, but by the user of the land. So the council of mayor and aldermen judged, and probably not entirely coincidentally the first council since World War II without the social-democratic party PvdA. The idea was that individuals should be able to build up their own capital through land ownership and would thus develop a more intensive bond with their living environment. From that year on, private ownership of land became the new standard in Rotterdam and leasehold the exception.

In Amsterdam, too, a council without the social democrats took office in 2014, after the PvdA had been represented in the municipal council for more than a century. More than 125 years ago, Amsterdam had been the first Dutch municipality in which it was decided to issue all land under ground lease conditions. The municipality nowadays still owns about 80 percent of the land. And since its introduction in 1896, the original goal of allowing the increase in the value of land to benefit the community had never been changed.

From Eternal to Extinguished: The Reform of Municipal Ground Lease in the Netherlands

by Rinske Bijl

“On a Sunday afternoon, the city council of Amsterdam flushed 100 years of progressive policy down the drain,” says journalist Hans de Geus. “Melancholy, disappointment and a fighting spirit” prevail in the green progressive party (GroenLinks). “A historic blunder,” according to Marjolein Moorman, currently alderman for the social-democratic party (PvdA). The reactions to the most recent change in the Amsterdam ground lease system were quite severe. The tenor of these reactions was that in 2016, the system was so fundamentally changed that it was de facto abolished. In contrast, there was a euphoric mood among homeowners and right-wing parties. “It’s done,” tweeted a supporter of the liberal party (VVD) enthusiastically.

The system change had been a fervent wish of the liberals, who traditionally stand up for the interests of homeowners. Remarkable, because it had also been a liberal, alderman Treub, who had stood at the beginning of the Amsterdam ground lease system. By no longer selling municipal land, and instead giving it out on long lease, the municipality at the end of the 19th century wanted to get a grip on the uncontrolled growth of the city, stimulate the construction of houses, fight speculation, and make sure the growing value of the land would benefit the community, instead of the individual land owner.