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Robin Greer's avatar

In commercial areas, the cost of everything is so high because elitist investors own the land which you rent from them at exorbitant prices. They love their passive income. You will own nothing and you will be happy - sound familiar? This system makes the wealthy very wealthy and makes life exorbitantly expensive for the peons and surfs. It's like this in all cities and it's such a rip-off. It's worse than a time-share. As an example, hair salons are so expensive because of the rent - in an small city in a not so good part of town and in a not so well maintained building, we know of a salon where the rent is $5,000 a month. So just to break even, the owner has to clear $5,000 each month and that doesn't include other expenses.

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Donna in MO's avatar

AND in my city, as the older strip centers start to look ratty, the owners plead hardship to the city council and get them to pass CID's - a 1% sales tax on all purchases made in the center, where the money goes into a fund to fix up the property. And yet the city keeps incentivizing developments with EVEN MORE retail. It's hard to find places that don't have the added tax at this point. This is an issue state-wide.

A handful of our city council reps are starting to push back on this, but developers are BIG campaign contributors, and campaigns are expensive. Too few people donate - have friends running at all levels - local, state and even for congress, who are trying to not take PAC or special interest money but they are at a huge disadvantage to those who are flush with cash.

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G Harkness's avatar

This isn't completely unheard of in other areas. Fifty years ago my first husband and I bought a house situated on a private lake. Beautiful lake, tucked away in NE Texas. Anyway, we were admonished that we only had a 99-year lease on the land, though we could/would own the home. I don't know if that's still the case, but I can tell you it was fairly obvious that the purpose was to exclude "undesirable" buyers. I'll leave it to you to determine who was considered "undesirable" in NE Texas in the 1970's.

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Starsky's avatar

That’s the law in Hawaii also. All those buildings, condos, homes, high rises built since the 1950s are sitting on 99-year land leases.

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Robin Greer's avatar

Interesting.

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Mrs. Mantle's avatar

That is definitely medieval.

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