Is there any place in the world (not a whole country, but just a district) that still allows homesteading, or recently introduced homesteading?
Not to distract from the main question, but I think one of the biggest taxes we pay and the biggest cause of homelessness is that we do not recognize homesteading. There is no way that an empty plot of land should be hundreds of thousands of dollars when one could homestead that land for free a few km away. Most middle class people spend much of their working lives paying for this “tax” because their home and property costed so much.
one of the biggest taxes we pay and the biggest cause of homelessness is that we do not recognize homesteading
Either I am very ignorant or this is very brilliant. If this is logically sound, then this could be a great idea to be used in debates against statists (especially leftists).
I only know this from word of mouth, so take it with a grain of salt. I will speak from the US perspective, specifically from an experience from the Southern California housing boom half a decade ago.
From my understanding, I believe you can declare homestead (assuming you own the property) through the County. There also may be certain tax benefits. Not many folks actually go through the paperwork to do this, even if one does own the property.
FYI, here is an example form that one can use to homestead:
Yes, my other thoughts about that are that homesteading is not the only picture. The other part is zoning laws / building codes. To see this, you just have to live outside the US for a while, for example in Asia. Many Thais are making only $300 bucks a month with a university degree but they’re not homeless, they can all afford apartments or a room in a house. The government doesn’t regulate who can rent out a room or pose expensive building codes (which really do nothing to improve safety, I lived in a new apartment building in Thailand for $125 per month and it was great, pool, 24 hour security, great location) which drive the cost of renting places up. Basically the market for single person apartments, rooms, or studios is way too small in the West. In my town, you have to get permission from the town and have your place properly “suited” to be able to rent out a room, which means upgrades. Of course you can do it illegally in the West but you can’t advertise in the paper. In Asia you just find someone who wants to live in the room, just as if they were family. If it has an outside entrance, even better. There’s your income, you don’t report it.
It is not just Thailand, I can get downtown accomodation in Seoul, a city of nearly 20 million total, for $250 per month with all my utilities included. $450 per month and an old woman gives you a room in her house (along with other young people who live in her other rooms) and she cooks meals for everybody, two meals a day, does your laundry. You never see any homeless people in Seoul.
Also, maybe I’m just being a little cynical here but I always felt that established, adult libertarians never advocated homesteading enough because they had a hand in the game so to speak. I mean, the property values for the house they paid would go down a lot. I’m not saying that they argue against homesteading, it just seems they don’t argue for it in proportion with how much freedom it could give us and economic problems it could solve.
You have to look at it this way: people often slave away at the same job for 20 years because they’re trapped in a mortgage. Imagine if their property and house were half or even less than half of what they costed today. This ban of homesteading is a regulation that takes like 10-15 years of people’s lives away. It’s an enormous issue, which is why I feel like I don’t see it advocated enough. But maybe people just don’t realize how huge it is. I think I’m being conservative with the potential price decreases too. For example, property prices are out of control in Vancouver, but there is a huge agricultural land reserve in prime city area land, and also 97% of our province is owned by the government. I think if we went from 3% of provincial land being open to private development, to 100%, we would see dramatic rises in standard of living (and falling property values).
About my last post: Come to think of it, renting a room out illegally is what both liberals and conservatives do all the time secretly. Everyone of any political pursuasion does it and tries to ignore the law. Would there really be that much opposition to overturning such laws on the city level? The problem is nobody is motivated about city politics /city councils except for the greediest political rats, so even if most of the spectrum hates these intrusions onto our liberty, the kind of scum that become city councilors or mayors ignore them because nobody even votes in municipal elections.