In most states there's already an additional tax for not living in the home in the form of not receiving the homestead exemption.

Expanding the homestead exemption could be part of the solution.

Perhaps, but the prevalence of single family homes is a huge problem itself. They generally bring in less in tax dollars than they cost the city to maintain, since it's more road, sidewalk, sewer, etc. for one household. My tax dollars as someone who lives in a multifamily building subsidize others in my city who have one household on much larger properties. I don't want these people to have more tax breaks and incentivize more of that to be built.

The consequences of that would be tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people like me quickly losing their place to live. Lots of people can only afford to live right now because they're fortunate enough to know somebody with a second place which they can rent at below market rates. Most of the neighborhood I live in was bought and built in the late 80s, and is now the de facto retirement plan for dozens of military members who bought these places. No one idea fixes anything entirely, but I think the zoning ideas are the most widely and quickly effective, without destroying lives of average people.

The issue is there's nothing stopping house owners from increasing the rent they charge to cover their costs. There needs to be enforced rent control in order for the profit margin to be squeezed.

Been saying for years the easy way out of this mess is that residential property may only be owned by individuals, and to prevent hoarding, add an additional 10% to the property and sales tax of each property above one. So your 2nd property costs a mere 110%, but your 11th property will be assessed at 200% of the taxes.

We would also need some enforced rent controls, so that expense isn't passed on to the renters.

For those wondering like me, Camazotz is a Mayan bat spirit at the service of the lords of the underworld. So, I’m really not sure what to make of that reference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camazotz

As a similar alternative, a Land Value Tax would be a good way to drive more efficient uses of land. Single family homes on large lots in cities would quickly become uneconomical.

Seriously how fucking hard is it to implement that? It seems so incredibly obvious.

I don’t think the “corporate greed” argument is that relevant here, not having to buy all of those things means someone has more disposable income, so spending I don’t think really changes, it’s just you spend less on necessities and more on “fun stuff” so to speak. There’s not much imperial evidence to support it either way, and most of the opposition to zoning reform comes from NIMBys who are scared of any changes in the neighborhood and maybe a little bigoted.

Speaking of which - developers: They have good reason to support denser housing, they’ll get higher returns on selling more houses or apartments on the same land. The reason houses are built huge and expensive is that zoning laws specify large minimum lot sizes, forcing developers to sell what few homes they can build for higher prices. Single family zoning creates artificial scarcity (again mostly out of bigotry and paranoia). If developers weee given more freedom to build what they want, it would be most economical for them to build transit-oriented rowhouse developments. This was standard practice a century ago, but since then it’s mostly been banned.