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S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax
- baggy_trough 4y agoDefinitely a nasty tax. Another example of why you should not locate your home or business in SF - the voters love to tax anything no matter what the harmful effects are.
- jmplng 4y agoIt’s sad because it’s true — politics and governing here seems far more insane than anywhere else I’ve lived in terms of a focus on bananas laws/taxes/regulations instead of just getting the core job done. It’s a great place in a lot of ways, that could be great in a lot more. (No particular opinion on this tax as I intend to leave regardless).
- rcpt 4y agoBecause of Prop 13 and the various extensions passed by HJTA (eg Prop 218) the state needs to come up with increasingly bananas schemes to fund public services. In a sane place we'd simply adjust property taxes but that's not possible in California.
- themitigating 4y agoSeems? Maybe because right wing media has constantly stated this opinion over years you think it's just a fact.
- jmplng 4y agoI mean, I lived here 12 years and in a Midwest city 10 years before that. There’s a big difference. Obviously for any 1 human the N will be small. So I used “seems” to indicate that while that’s my experience I don’t have like a study to prove it.
- darkwizard42 4y agoIt might be helpful to have an opinion on this tax. Perhaps this is one of the more useful ones. Not all taxes are bad, but agreed that SF seems to miss the mark more often than not.
- KingLancelot 4y ago[dead]
- gausswho 4y agoThis wouldn't affect those who live in their homes, or even those who have a property with less than three units.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> voters love to tax anything no matter what the harmful effects are I broadly share your view of San Francisco's civic culture. But what are the unexpected consequences of a vacancy tax? Practically every problem I think of, e.g. developers getting hit when the market goes down being forced to fire sell, has a simple solution (renting on short-term leases). The only failure mode is market breakdown, i.e. where homeowners trying to rent cannot find tenants at any price.
- darkwizard42 4y agoI can guess that if market breakdown occurs there are much larger problems to resolve. Some potential situations: - social situation untenable (too much homelessness or crime?) - earthquake or natural disaster making the area uninhabitable - massive glut of housing available (lol)
- baggy_trough 4y agoWhen commenting on a law it's important to read the actual text because it usually has surprising effects. https://sfstandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Empty-Homes-Tax-Final.docx.pdf https://sfstandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Empty-Home... There are many, but I'll list just one for that great SF flavor. You can exclude a vacant residence if it is currently waiting for a building permit. But the exclusion only lasts one year, no matter how long SF takes to approve the permit. If there are multiple permit cycles, only the first year of any can be excluded. Build a new large apartment, and it takes more than a year to lease out? As a nice thank-you from SF for your building contribution, you can now pay that vacancy tax. There is a more general problem here though. This whole thing suffers from Smart Person syndrome, where Smart People will continue tweaking every little detail of life without realizing that they have created a system that is more and more complicated and more and more impossible to deal with. I don't really know how they are going to be able to tell that these units are vacant. Maybe owners should just lie to avoid the expense and hassle of tracking this. That's also not great.
- rcpt 4y agoI assume you've never heard about Prop 13?
- thewildginger 4y agoShelter as a necessity for life that is artificial and cities being the main entry point for wealth in the world kind of make this a necessity. It's not like any of these business owners will stop being landlords because they will still make money. Making money without working for it should be hard. What is nasty about not allowing a select few to control a basic human necessity?
- halfnormalform 4y agoWhat a great idea! There should absolutely be a tax on hoarding more than you need or can put to use.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago[flagged]
- upsidesinclude 4y agoDouble plus
- camgunz 4y ago"“The government cannot compel a property owner to rent his or her property to third parties without violating” the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the lawsuit said." A vacancy tax no more compels someone to rent their property than an income tax compels me to be unemployed. Feels like the kind of lazy argument you'd lob up just to give your fellow rich people an opportunity to bail you out in a hyper undemocratic way.
- tomcam 4y agoAre there any limiting principles to your perspective? Do you feel it would be acceptable for your municipality to tax your disuse of expensive guitars, riding mowers, boats, or graphics cards you don't actually employ to their satisfaction?
- VirusNewbie 4y agoTaxing externalities differently than other things is common. Taking up land is not the same as owning other things.
- gausswho 4y agoYour analogy doesn't hold, because owning and neglecting such items doesn't prevent someone else from having them. Property speculation is so runaway that landlords are keeping properties vacant because they hope to make more money on rising real estate values alone.
- db48x 4y agoThe number of top–end GPUs in existence is finite and surprisingly small. If I buy one, that is one fewer for everyone else to squabble over. It is in effect just the same as land, and GPU prices are much higher today than they were 5 years ago. Even 5 year old used GPUs cost as much or more than they did 5 years ago.
- gausswho 4y agoThere's a material difference between shelter and gaming peripherals.
- GalenErso 4y agoVacancy taxes are good but not enough by themselves. S.F. needs more housing, including middle housing, three or four story buildings with multiple units. The market dynamics that apply to shampoo and fridges apply to housing as well. Prices are elevated because of an imbalance between supply and demand. Supply must rise to match demand. Let investors and speculators snatch up new housing units, at least at first. Investors do not have access to unlimited capital. If $100B worth of new housing hit the market overnight, it would be impossible for investors to buy them all. Keep building housing until investors run out of money and normal people can start buying them.
- TedShiller 4y ago> S.F. needs more housing Always funny to see this taken at face value. SF doesn’t “need” housing. People want to pay less for housing. Not the same thing at all.
- Retric 4y agoS.F. suffers from insufficient housing, calling it a need is just a handy shortcut.
- TedShiller 4y agoDo they also suffer from insufficient Lamborghinis?
- Retric 4y agoNo, the lack of Lamborghinis isn’t causing problems.
- TedShiller 4y agoNeither is the lack of luxury housing
- 4y ago
- kaycebasques 4y agohttps://archive.is/UcyKU https://archive.is/UcyKU
- koolba 4y agoThis will get spicy if the tax itself is upheld, but the exclusions for single family homes and 3-or-less unit buildings is thrown out. Are there any examples of a similar tax in other parts of CA or elsewhere in the USA?
- sundaeofshock 4y agohttps://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy-tax https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/speculation-vacancy...
- AgentOrange1234 4y agoPerhaps the homestead exemption, which lowers taxes on the house you actually live in versus additional houses you have, is a precedent?
- yonran 4y agoOakland also has a vacancy tax (2018 Measure W, https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/vacantpropertytax https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/vacantpropertytax), but it is limited to $6k per year per property, whereas San Francsico’s 2022 Proposition M increases to $20k per unit, which the plaintiffs argue is so burdensome that is not simply a revenue-raising tax but it compels the owners into business against their will (https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/small-realty-vs-san-francisco-complaint-.pdf https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/sm...).
- ecf 4y agoSo many lazy landlords in this thread who don’t provide any benefit whatsoever to society.
- actually_a_dog 4y agoThat's not true. By restricting supply, they raise property values for all housing owners, whether they rent out their properties or live in them. NIMBYs and landlords should be natural allies as such.
- erik_seaberg 4y agoI’m glad landlords let me rent for many years, because I was never forced to commit to buying a house in the wrong place for my career.
- ProAm 4y agoThis should apply to commercial as well as residential real estate.
- 71a54xd 4y agoRegardless of politics, landlords who deliberately keep empty apartments off-market are a menace to society. If CA can't sue these people into infinity I don't know another state that can and no rent-control isn't the answer here... It's literally a bigger problem facing the working class or anyone without a mommy and daddy check than the diamond industry creating false scarcity and still propping up the price of "natural" diamonds over lab stones...
- Izikiel43 4y agoIt's their property, they are free to use it (or not) as they see fit. The solution for all this issues on lack of housing is easy, let people build more. SF is famous for its Kafkaesque regulations and zoning for building. Remove them, let apartment buildings be built everywhere, and the problem will solve itself.
- gausswho 4y agoThey are free to keep or sell as the populace around them votes how best their land is used.
- AdrianB1 4y agoThat is called mob rule.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoAs opposed to minority rule by land holders?
- 71a54xd 4y agoIMO it's a zoning problem. If you build residential it should be occupied, in theory if you build it that's the entire point. Mixed use / commercial is another story. If implemented correctly, this could also solve the issue of foreign nationals buying up tons of property just to sit on as an investment - which is a net negative for anyone actually living in the city where these properties are built.
- slt2021 4y agoIt is just another form of property tax, you can keep your units vacant and keep paying “vacant property tax”, or you can let people live in and collect rent and pay reduced taxes
- paulpauper 4y agoThe problem is the difficulty of the eviction process, collecting rent, and regulation disincentivizes optimal use of land. To mitigate high risk tenants, landlords require huge, multi-month deposits and extensive credit checks, but this means fewer renters will qualify, hence vacancy. It's a problem that cannot be blamed just on landlords.
- delecti 4y agoAcquiring property is a rather involved process which is rather difficult to do accidentally. If one wants to avoid all of those challenges, it's rather easy to simply not buy houses which one doesn't intend to occupy. If one already finds themselves facing those challenges, one could also stop being a landlord by selling the house, and avoid them in the future. I hear the property market is pretty hot in SF, so selling the house doesn't seem like it would be an enormous challenge.
- yumraj 4y agoI don't live in SF and don't have a home to rent, yet I just don't understand the rationale behind this law. I absolutely support rent control and various other provisions, but there could be many reasons for a person not wanting to rent. Next, will I be forced to rent my car to those who don't have one, or forced to rent rooms in my house if not enough people in my household etc. This is a very slippery slope. NOTE: I agree with the intent of what this seems to want to do, but not the implementation.
- AdrianB1 4y agoYou will own nothing and you will be happy /s.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoThe housing problem in SF is entirely due to lack of supply. There is a limited amount of land in SF, you can't just go and build more land and because of that it is very difficult to solve the supply problem. Disincentivizing vacancy is one method of increasing housing supply. If you don't want to rent your property you should sell it to someone who is.
- yumraj 4y ago> If you don't want to rent your property you should sell it to someone who is. What if I'm old and don't want the hassle of renters OR perhaps my house is not in a condition that it can be rented without substantial investment in fixing it which I can't afford right now OR am just keeping the house to sell later to pay for my retirement or to give to my kids as inheritance OR any number of reasons. I shouldn't be forced to pay a tax on top of the property tax nor should I be forced to sell it.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoYes you should. Your actions are causing considerable harm to society. It is completely reasonable to use taxes to incentivize actions that improve society. Improperly utilizing high value land is very harmful, we don't have to just sit here and let you do it without consequences.
- jrs235 4y agoHow about tax all properties at a higher rate and offer a rebate/refund for people that reside in the municipality?
- RhysU 4y agoHow hard is it to fake being occupied? Pay someone a modest amount to live in the unit on paper.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoAbout as hard as any other type of fraud.
- RhysU 4y agoMaybe easier than other types of fraud. > [from elsewhere on the web] ...property owners with at least three units that have been vacant for more than 182 days (six months) will be taxed... This is not enforceable. It will be dodged by the dishonest and thereby drive compliant, honest landlords out of business.
- arretevad 4y agoImo, rent seeking in general should be illegal.
- el_don_almighty 4y agoThe movie Pacific Heights came out in 1990, proving that rental issues in S.F. are nothing new. ooooh.... so creepy