It disincentivizes speculative holding and buying up inventory to reduce supply without demonstrated demand. Large landlords are willing to sit on vacant inventory in order to keep market rates high. By penalizing holding units vacant, that should incentivise either setting more competitive rents, or selling/not buying excess inventory.

In markets where there is a true undersupply of inventory and there aren’t vacancies then, yes, this policy wouldn’t have much benefit.

That’s why the homestead credit would only be payable to the resident. Residency is what matters here not the paper owner.

I won’t claim there aren’t potential loopholes in a casually described plan, but the one you brought up doesn’t apply without fraudulent claims of residency.

Currently, large corporate landlords are willing to let housing units sit empty vs letting market rates drop. A company with 500 units makes the same amount leasing 400 units at $1500/mo as they would leasing 470 units at $1300/mo and they have less overhead. The realpage software lets them coordinate with all the other corporate landlords without direct communication.

The reason I think this policy would help renters is by making vacant units significantly more expensive and pushing corporate property managers to actually compete rather than sit on vacancies.

I think I’d rather see this adressed on the property tax side with a homestead tax exemption. Let counties and municipalities significantly raise property tax rates then offer homestead tax rebates to the primary resident. Maybe even offer a monthly rebate to match rent/mortgage payments. Rent would go up, but the rebate should match the rent increase.

This would make empty units, short term rentals, and vacation home more expensive to hold on to compared to being pccupied by a long term resident. This would also let each region decide on the ratio of occupied vs unoccupied net property tax rates to dial in what works for them. A coastal community might have a much different equilibrium point than a suburb to a big city for example.

A lot of areas already have homestead exemptions for seniors and low income residents, so it doesn’t even require much in terms of new legal frameworks.

'93 here and I think the passage of the Patriot Act was a pretty important demarcation line, not just for abandonment of due process, but also when all the major networks embraced telling their audience who to hate.

Surely the second commandment was more of a suggestion.

And they will make sure to continue to not know a single thing about what was said. Ignorance isn’t a valid legal defence, but it sure is a common deflection tactic these days. Law makers have a professional and ethical obligation to become informed on the issues their constituents care about, but it seems like it’s rare to find one that remembers that obligation.

Will Forte. His voice and “quirky” style I find just irritating and not at all amusing.

“Fancy graphics” also doesn’t correlate well with how visually appealing a game is. I would take Ori graphics over CoD any day.

Which is to say that prices did increase every generation.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to colocate large greenhouses with datacenters. The exhaust temperatures seem compatible with hothouse growing. The heat would still end up in the atmosphere, but at least it could enable growth of fresh local produce first.

High aspect ratio just doesn’t roll off the tongue does it?

The problem isn’t methane production, it’s excessive soluble proteins producing a thick foam that prevents the methane from being expelled through the esophagus. Any feed produces large amounts of gas in grazing animals. What changes is the animals ability to safely vent the gas.

https://biologyinsights.com/why-does-alfalfa-cause-bloat-in-cattle/

Sometimes animals escape their enclosures and mis-feed themselves. The couple times I’ve witnessed this were the result of cows helping themselves to a field of alfalfa. Alfalfa is good as a component of a silage mix but is too rich to be consumed fresh on its own. But cows love alfalfa and are good at finding weaknesses in fencing.

What could one legislator cost, Michael, 25,000 dollars?

Iowa pays its general assembly members a salary of $25k a yr. So $200k a yr in lobbying from a single company potentially buys a lot of influence.

Definitely, any changes natural or anthropogenic would be measured and to great accuracy. I just wanted to point out that the notion of the general public, especially if conditioned to distrust scientists and authorities, not noticing changes isn’t the outlandish part. See global warming denial despite years of record setting temperatures.

Ignoring conspiracy theory stuff, people aren’t very good at perceiving changes in light levels if they happen gradually. During any solar eclipse there are wide bands where only a partial eclipse is observed. It’s pretty common for people in those bands to not notice that something has changed even with 50% occlusion.

Do new oil and gas leases qualify as weather modification? What about clear cutting forests and draining wetlands?

Yeah that’s my attitude as well. I grow the things that are significantly better straight out of the garden. The best tomatoes are too fragile to go through the sorting machinery, so growing your own enables much higher quality produce. Berries are way better picked ripe. Green beans are also super easy to grow and are better fresh.

Then there’s varieties that just aren’t popular enough for many stores to stock and specialty stores are far and expensive: patty pan squash, molokhia, ground cherries, shallots, celery leaves (I don’t like the stalk), a variety of herbs, peppers that aren’t bell or jalapeno, etc.

American chestnuts will die here, but I have a magnificent large Chinese chestnut tree in my yard. It’s not the same, but at least we get to harvest some 10-15 gallons of chestnuts every fall.