A Modest Proposal II: A Progressive Tax on Square Footage

Humans are unique in the extent to which we need to make an environment hospitable for us. We are fragile. We exist within a narrow range of acceptable temperature — below 65, we freeze; above 95, we cook. We must remain dry — the skin and nerves of our feet will rot, if kept wet for too long. Our soft pink flesh becomes a source of torture, if we can’t preempt the onslaught of biting insects that species like deer and mountain goat tolerate every day of their lives.

We must create bubbles in our hostile surroundings. We hardly notice the fact of it — how dependent we are on spaces within which we eradicate all life but our own. Only the carefully cultivated species we find pleasing are allowed in: fido, ficus, feline. We accept without complaint the perverse way in which these antiseptic spaces designed to save also sicken — allergies are a modern phenomenon, an effect of depriving us of exposure to the biome our immune systems used to learn in our infancy.

Such space is not without cost. Within the footprint of the humblest hut, there would once have been hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of creatures: bugs, bacteria, even a mammal or two. Where we need a roof to shed water, rain once fell and seeped into the ground. The ground is cleared of plants that converted sunlight into oxygen. If a modern home takes over the space, it is quite sterile, a dead zone for all but the hardiest of microbes that can survive in the barren wastelands of our interior space. Tardigrades and dust mites are our closest friends.

As the size increases, so does the cost. Every linear square foot compounds the cubic footage that must be heated, illuminated, and kept safe from all other forms of life. Multiply by eight billion people or even just the 300 million in the US, and the cost grows exponentially.

We have to accept that some amount of this is necessary. People can’t grow back the hair we lost after coming down from the trees. It is fair to ask just how much of it is necessary. The larger the space, the further it gets from the basic justification for it. It begins to serve other purposes, and now it’s fair for society to pass that cost along to those who benefit from it.

Right now, there is a false economy and a massive profit motive to build homes as large as zoning laws will permit. Anyone who builds a home that doesn’t balloon to 4,000 or 5,000 square feet is an idiot leaving money on the table. This practice has an immediate deleterious human impact of building fewer homes, leading to a shortage. It also means that what housing stock does come available is as expensive as possible. No one has an incentive to build more and more modest homes.

The greater cost is environmental. Unless the house has electric heat and unless the source of electricity is solar or wind or hydrological, all that heated space drives greenhouse gas emissions. Tack on habitat destruction, and you have a double whammy not presently priced into the model. The subsidized damage inures to the builder’s and the seller’s benefit.

To defray both sets of societal costs, I hereby propose: there should be a progressive excise tax on the construction of new homes. As square footage increases, the rate of taxation should increase exponentially. The inflection point can be set at some reasonable amount for the average family. For sake of argument, let’s call it 2,400 square feet: 600 per member of the household. Up to that point, the rate is modest, appropriate to a basic necessity of life. From there, it climbs faster and faster until a 5,000 square foot home is an exorbitant luxury.

Over time, a similar — though somewhat more gradual — tax rate could be applied to other large houses to avoid a booming secondary market for very large homes. Eventually, these would become too expensive to leave as is and would be replaced with smaller or even multiple homes.

Apartments, meanwhile, could be actively subsidized with the proceeds of the tax. People should, in fact, live close together. It’s more efficient. More to the point, it preserves the natural spaces we are all ultimately dependent on.

As much as we try to lock ourselves in, we need that hostile world to give us food to eat and air to breathe. It’s time to let it back in.