Comment by sorcerer-mar

"Revenue neutral" at time of implementation. It's not a bunch of people being jolted out of their houses by the policy.

> this policy forces people who bought affordable homes decades ago to either pay significantly more or sell when their neighborhoods gentrify.

Correct. The alternative is that these people freeze a region in time while prices continue to skyrocket due to the increasingly Sisyphean efforts of those around them to grow the local economy.

> who benefits when they're forced to sell? developers who can afford both the LVT and development costs.

All of the people who are moving into an area and developing its economy further? Yes, developers get a cut for the work that they do of developing the area to meet the new demands on it. What's wrong with that exactly?

> you still haven't addressed how LVT solves the actual constraint

Yes I have. LVT makes it cost-prohibitive not to develop land to its highest use. In a hot real estate market, highest use will be to build more units. It has nothing to do with land availability.