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"“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

"“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 ago
Are 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 ago
  Taxing externalities differently than other things is common. Taking up land is not the same as owning other things.
- gausswho 4y ago
  Your 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      There's a material difference between shelter and gaming peripherals.
    - schrodinger 4y ago
      Housing is a little more of a critical need for people than graphics cards…
      - db48x 4y ago
        That’s irrelevant. We’re considering here how the market prices them, not what they are used for or how important they are.
        Gigachad 4y ago
        It’s hardly irrelevant. Proved by the fact the people voted for a vacancy tax and not an unused GPU tax.
        db48x 4y ago
        /me facepalms That’s circular. This discussion of GPUs started when tomcam asked why a tax on unused housing was OK, and whether or not it could be extended to a tax on unused GPUs. In particular, a vacancy tax seems to force people to rent out property rather than merely posses it. Can the same law be used to force people to enter into other rental agreements? I have a bunch of old computer parts, including motherboards, cpus, and gpus sitting around unused. I dare say that I could build two or three working computers out of them. Should I be taxed for owning these unused computers? I have a few thousand books that I’m not currently reading, what about them? Should we tax people for having more books than they can carry? What about your bed, which is currently going unused approximately 16 hours out of the day? Can the government one day force you to rent that out too? Hot bunking would certainly “solve” any housing problem a city might face. Where is the distinction? Simply stating that no law has been passed to force you to rent out your unused GPUs is not stating a guiding principle, because that’s merely a matter of time.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  There’s no comparison. Land already has a ton of riders attached to it, because ultimately a city, state, or nation is defined by the land they control. For example, we would all be justifiably outraged if the government declared that SF buyers are only allowed to buy AMD graphics cards, while those living in Oakland are allowed only Nvidia, and the rest of the people in the area are not allowed graphics cards at all. And yet, while many like me dislike land zoning, which is basically equivalent to the graphics card example, no one is calling it a fundamentally illegal and unconstitutional practice.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Some states have annual property tax on cars and boats.
  - codemac 4y ago
    ... they already have those on housing. No one taxes you more or less because of how frequently you use your boat, or if you rent your boat to others, etc.
    - orwin 4y ago
      They should just make a law to decrease taxes on primary house by 75%, on secondary houses by 50%, then augment the taxation by 400%. I understand having a vacation/family home (not in crowded cities however), but having more than one and leaving it empty just to raise the price of similar unit feel really scammy to me.
      - codemac 4y ago
        > but having more than one and leaving it empty just to raise the price of a similar unit Is there a dearth of this happening? SF vacancy rates are roughly the same as they are across the country. Also, from a balance sheet standpoint: if you raise the rent of a similar unit, then the rent lost on your empty unit goes up. You're actually losing more money (potential rent - rent received).
- camgunz 4y ago
  Yes, housing is a fundamental human need and expensive guitars aren't. Call it the Shkreli principle.
  - gotoeleven 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - delecti 4y ago
      Importantly they said fundamental need and not fundamental right, though I find it a bit disgusting how someone could be so strongly opposed to helping people meet their basic needs. Isn't that what society is for?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - onos 4y ago
    But is housing in SF a fundamental need? I think the question posed is quite relevant, and FWIW my take is that property rights are a concern here. The answer is that there are other concerns in tension with this — including the desire to have more affordable housing in The city and voters apparently consider this to be more important in this case.
    - bubblethink 4y ago
      The landlords are free to move out of SF as much as tenants are. Nobody is held at gunpoint.
      - AdrianB1 4y ago
        They cannot move out taking the houses with them. Not at gunpoint, but still not able to move it.
    - actually_a_dog 4y ago
      It's a fundamental need for some people, if you want to have a healthy city where firefighters, teachers, baristas, servers, etc. can live there without having the city's cost of living externalized via multiple hour megacommutes.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
  Sure, if voters elect politicians who enact taxes like that, the judicial branch shouldn’t stand in their way. The remedy for that problem would be the ballot box.
  - AdrianB1 4y ago
    No, the judicial branch has the role to check that democracy does not become mob rule. There are some basic rights and liberties, but there are others not clear written on paper, but still not removable by vote.
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
      Taxes on land and personal property in the US date back to colonial times. And tax policy often distinguishes between property utilized in different ways (eg. personal vs. business). I doubt you’d convince a judge that a tax that varies based on whether property is unused impinges on some fundamental right in a materially different way.
      - AdrianB1 4y ago
        This is not what I addressed with my comment.
- humanistbot 4y ago
  Not OP, but the limiting principle is democracy. That's what gets you off the slippery slope. A tax on vacant homes passed a referendum, but barely at 54.5%, and SF is probably the least landlord-friendly city in the US. Nobody is proposing city taxes on unused guitars, boats, or graphics cards. That would never pass. There is no public policy benefit to doing so, other than generic tax revenue. And if it did, I would move and feel comfortable doing so because I would not want to live in a city whose majority voting population is bananas.
  - AdrianB1 4y ago
    Unfortunately moving the house is not an option, otherwise these taxes would be almost fine (as long as you have a choice).
- beej71 4y ago
  If society got pissed off enough about your unused guitar, you betcher ass they'd pass a law taxing it. It's not The Government you're up against--it's The People!
Overtonwindow 4y ago
A better argument would be that the government cannot force the person to enter into a contract with a private party.
- Retric 4y ago
  They aren’t, owners could for example occupy their own property or sell it.
- camgunz 4y ago
  No one's being forced (which is a synonym of compelled) to do anything. Taxation is not compulsion.
  - rgifford 4y ago
    It's pretty coercive. Taxes are levied against transactions. A tax in the absence of a transaction is really just a fine. And fining people for not selling something violates most folks conception of basic property rights and privacy. I get that the city is looking for a way out of 50 years of systematic underdevelopment, but this just feels wrong. I don't trust government overreach to fix decades of bad governance.
    - actually_a_dog 4y ago
      You've got an easy, built-in way to avoid the tax if you don't want to pay it.
    - camgunz 4y ago
      Most people don't think you should be able to buy up a precious thing and squander it. Locke--the guy who came up with life, liberty, and property, based the property right on the owner's ability and duty to improve. Leaving apartments vacant doesn't sound like improvement. Taxes also aren't coercive; even SCOTUS hasn't held that. They've held that benefits can be, but not taxes. That's a right-wing anti-tax talking point that has no other principle. What amount wouldn't be coercive? Under what conditions would it be not coercive? What taxes are and aren't coercive: gas taxes, capital gains taxes, sales taxes? The idea is to just say "taxes are coercive" and close the book, which Grover Norquist might buy, but we've got a civilization to run so we need to do better.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mdmglr 4y ago
> A vacancy tax no more compels someone to rent their property than an income tax compels me to be unemployed. This analogy doesn’t make sense to me. Perhaps you can clarify.
- meepmorp 4y ago
  You're not required to rent, but you would pay the tax if the property is unrented. You still have the option of not renting, but that's no longer a cost free choice.
  - barelysapient 4y ago
    The property owner already pays property taxes so it’s not ‘free’.
    - meepmorp 4y ago
      Yes, but that cost is independent of rental status. The purpose of the tax is to introduce a cost associated with rental status.
- camgunz 4y ago
  People automatically equate taxation with fines and coercion, but they're separate concepts. The best example is the income tax. If we slap taxes on things we don't want people to do, then why do we literally tax work, a thing we want almost everyone to do? So taxes aren't fines or fees, and they don't force you to stop doing something you want to do or do something you don't want to. People still buy groceries despite sales taxes (which, again, we want people to buy stuff). Thus, the argument that a vacancy tax compels rental property owners to rent their places falls. I'm not compelled by income tax to be unemployed, nor am I compelled by sales taxes to purchase no goods, nor are owners compelled to rent their places.
  - hgdfhgfdhgdf 4y ago
    [flagged]
rodgerd 4y ago
The Supreme Court has demonstrated that it doesn't really care about the lawful basis of cases; it's just a question of supplying an argument in the hope that they'll legislate the Heritage Foundation's roadmap for you.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
Imagine a law that states that you will pay a tax if you don’t run Microsoft Windows on your computer. You are of course free to not run Windows on your computer, but you will have to pay a tax for that.
voisin 4y ago
A landlord can’t unilaterally opt out of the vacancy tax though. It takes a tenant to agree to rent it and if society has done a shit job collectively to make the area viable for tenants (due to lack of crime or amount of foot traffic or tenants working from office) then the landlord is penalized with taxes for something the landlord can’t control. Paying income taxes is the “cost” of having income. You can opt out unilaterally. The analogy is wrong.
- jasonpeacock 4y ago
  The landlord can move into the property themselves, sell the property, or make the property more appealing to rent. There is plenty the landlord can control. What this tax does is say the landlord can't just sit on empty properties without penalty. Heck, the landlord could even work collectively with society to make the area viable for tenants!
  - voisin 4y ago
    > The landlord can move into the property themselves, sell the property, or make the property more appealing to rent. The Landlord occupying vast swathes of vacant space in its portfolio is the same as it being vacant. You realize landlords don’t have 1 employee for every employee it’s tenant has, right? That doesn’t scale. Selling just transfers the issue to someone else. Making the property more appealing isn’t as groundbreaking a proposition as you might think it is. Every landlord with vacancies in the country is trying to do just that. Implicit in your entire statement is that somehow Landlords are choosing to keep space vacant, against their own business interests, to… what? Spite the community? It makes no sense what you are saying. They are being punished with this tax while already paying property taxes, utilities, security, maintenance, etc, when the issue is that a pandemic hit and everyone started working from home. Now they should be punished with another tax because the angry masses want to shift the tax burden to them. Democracy at its worst.
    - arretevad 4y ago
      Selling doesn’t transfer the “issue” to someone else. It houses someone in need.
yonran 4y ago
> A vacancy tax no more compels someone to rent their property than an income tax compels me to be unemployed This is a bad analogy because an income tax is supposed to be for raising revenue, and it is generally understood that it should not be too high that it discourages too much economic activity. On the other hand, the Proposition M vacancy tax is explicitly intended to “disincentivize prolonged vacancies” by taxing up to $20k per unit per year (https://voterguide.sfelections.org/en/tax-keeping-residential-units-vacant https://voterguide.sfelections.org/en/tax-keeping-residentia...), which the plaintiffs argue violates the Ellis Act which says that homeowners have the right not to be in the business of being a landlord (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...).
- camgunz 4y ago
  > On the other hand, the Proposition M vacancy tax is explicitly intended to “disincentivize prolonged vacancies” Disincentivizing (hopefully not an actual word) is not compulsion. > the plaintiffs argue violates the Ellis Act which says that homeowners have the right not to be in the business of being a landlord This may be true; my legal knowledge is limited to being overzealously pre-law so I'm not an expert in CA law. That said, this sounds like a stupid law corrupted by landlords to duck housing rental regulations... OK checked Wikipedia and that's confirmed. Anyway I don't dispute this claim, just the Takings Clause argument, which again is very very bad.
- quantified 4y ago
  Wouldn't renting the unit out be economic activity (rent flows to landlord, household does house things, definitely economic)? Seems to discourage the lack thereof.
  - yonran 4y ago
    Yes, the vacancy tax encourages economic activity, which is the opposite of the income tax which has a side-effect of reducing economic activity. Another reason that camgunz’s analogy is flawed. According to the plaintiffs, the problem with the vacancy tax is that the city is not supposed to force homeowners into the business of renting that they do not want (Ellis Act https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&division=7.&title=1.&part=&chapter=12.75.&article= https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...). It is similar to the Obamacare individual mandate, which also forced people to enter the marketplace, which Congress is not allowed to do by the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. But in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the US Supreme Court said that the individual mandate is just a tax and not a compelled transaction, since “It may often be a reasonable financial decision to make the payment rather than purchase insurance, unlike the “prohibitory” financial punishment in Drexel Furniture” (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/519/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/519/)
linooma_ 4y ago
How would you feel if the government would tax you for being unemployed?
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  Like regular citizens around the globe that are taxed for any reason the government wants. Taxes were also used as a way to express the power of the mighty during most of the history, the original meaning of an income source for shared public services (aka "government") was long lost. If one thinks about universal oppression, discretionary taxes would be number one.
rgifford 4y ago
Why are these properties vacant? I'm pretty familiar as a renter and property owner with tenants rights in SF. If I were to buy a duplex in the city I would never ever ever rent out the extra unit. I'd lie about tenancy, ask a friend to pretend to rent it, or pay this proposed tax rather than rent it out. I'd recommend the same to everyone. Tenants are a liability for landlords in SF. You cannot end a tenancy, not with any amount of notice. That's a big deal and a huge policy mistake. Really messes up incentives. Let's say you and your partner have a duplex with two 2B/2BA units. You eventually decide to have kids and your parents are retiring. You want them to move into that unit so they can be near and babysit now and again. You could evict, but it's going to be costly and time consuming especially if the tenants are protected. Lawyers are going to tell you to buy the tenants out. Tenant buyouts in the city are usually mid five figures and they end up restricting some of your uses of the property forever. It will take months (maybe more than a year) and may end up creeping up towards six figures. You would've been better off never renting it out in the first place. Landlords aren't idiots and they aren't evil, at least not more so than anyone else. Put yourself in their shoes and figure out how the incentives would cause you to act. IMO it's as simple as fixing the policy issue: Landlords can terminate tenancies in good faith with two years notice. Seems very fair for everyone and I bet you get reduced vacancies without needing to increasingly ratchet up heavy handed market interventions that are themselves prone to unintended consequence.
- camgunz 4y ago
  I mean, very few of them are; SF's vacancy rate is crazy low. If the dynamic you're describing exists, very few people are doing it. Places with even stronger renters rights regimes have higher vacancy rates. SF's problem is just supply.
  - rgifford 4y ago
    The vacancy rate doesn't tell the whole story. Short term rentals and self reporting likely mask the effect I've mentioned. I generally agree, SFs problem is 100% supply. But I think that ends up being caused by slow approval processes and highly restrictive tenants rights. Why would you ever subdivide your property in SF to add another dwelling unit? You can't give a tenant any amount of notice to end a tenancy. You can't ever merge those units back together. SFs property market is really crazy in this regard: older buildings with lots of units are often worth less than large single family houses. Properties with tenants sell for 25-50% less than vacant comparables.
JuniorBalleg 4y ago
[dead]
snapplebobapple 4y ago
Well, i can tell you the around 50% tax rate where i am has compelled me to be far less employed, so your argument on that front is wrong.
- camgunz 4y ago
  I live and work in Amsterdam, so I cancel out your anecdata.

tomcam 4y ago

Are 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 ago
Taxing externalities differently than other things is common. Taking up land is not the same as owning other things.
gausswho 4y ago
Your 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    There's a material difference between shelter and gaming peripherals.
  - schrodinger 4y ago
    Housing is a little more of a critical need for people than graphics cards…
    - db48x 4y ago
      That’s irrelevant. We’re considering here how the market prices them, not what they are used for or how important they are.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        It’s hardly irrelevant. Proved by the fact the people voted for a vacancy tax and not an unused GPU tax.
        db48x 4y ago
        /me facepalms That’s circular. This discussion of GPUs started when tomcam asked why a tax on unused housing was OK, and whether or not it could be extended to a tax on unused GPUs. In particular, a vacancy tax seems to force people to rent out property rather than merely posses it. Can the same law be used to force people to enter into other rental agreements? I have a bunch of old computer parts, including motherboards, cpus, and gpus sitting around unused. I dare say that I could build two or three working computers out of them. Should I be taxed for owning these unused computers? I have a few thousand books that I’m not currently reading, what about them? Should we tax people for having more books than they can carry? What about your bed, which is currently going unused approximately 16 hours out of the day? Can the government one day force you to rent that out too? Hot bunking would certainly “solve” any housing problem a city might face. Where is the distinction? Simply stating that no law has been passed to force you to rent out your unused GPUs is not stating a guiding principle, because that’s merely a matter of time.
rhaway84773 4y ago
There’s no comparison. Land already has a ton of riders attached to it, because ultimately a city, state, or nation is defined by the land they control. For example, we would all be justifiably outraged if the government declared that SF buyers are only allowed to buy AMD graphics cards, while those living in Oakland are allowed only Nvidia, and the rest of the people in the area are not allowed graphics cards at all. And yet, while many like me dislike land zoning, which is basically equivalent to the graphics card example, no one is calling it a fundamentally illegal and unconstitutional practice.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Some states have annual property tax on cars and boats.
- codemac 4y ago
  ... they already have those on housing. No one taxes you more or less because of how frequently you use your boat, or if you rent your boat to others, etc.
  - orwin 4y ago
    They should just make a law to decrease taxes on primary house by 75%, on secondary houses by 50%, then augment the taxation by 400%. I understand having a vacation/family home (not in crowded cities however), but having more than one and leaving it empty just to raise the price of similar unit feel really scammy to me.
    - codemac 4y ago
      > but having more than one and leaving it empty just to raise the price of a similar unit Is there a dearth of this happening? SF vacancy rates are roughly the same as they are across the country. Also, from a balance sheet standpoint: if you raise the rent of a similar unit, then the rent lost on your empty unit goes up. You're actually losing more money (potential rent - rent received).
camgunz 4y ago
Yes, housing is a fundamental human need and expensive guitars aren't. Call it the Shkreli principle.
- gotoeleven 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - delecti 4y ago
    Importantly they said fundamental need and not fundamental right, though I find it a bit disgusting how someone could be so strongly opposed to helping people meet their basic needs. Isn't that what society is for?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- onos 4y ago
  But is housing in SF a fundamental need? I think the question posed is quite relevant, and FWIW my take is that property rights are a concern here. The answer is that there are other concerns in tension with this — including the desire to have more affordable housing in The city and voters apparently consider this to be more important in this case.
  - bubblethink 4y ago
    The landlords are free to move out of SF as much as tenants are. Nobody is held at gunpoint.
    - AdrianB1 4y ago
      They cannot move out taking the houses with them. Not at gunpoint, but still not able to move it.
  - actually_a_dog 4y ago
    It's a fundamental need for some people, if you want to have a healthy city where firefighters, teachers, baristas, servers, etc. can live there without having the city's cost of living externalized via multiple hour megacommutes.
fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
Sure, if voters elect politicians who enact taxes like that, the judicial branch shouldn’t stand in their way. The remedy for that problem would be the ballot box.
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  No, the judicial branch has the role to check that democracy does not become mob rule. There are some basic rights and liberties, but there are others not clear written on paper, but still not removable by vote.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
    Taxes on land and personal property in the US date back to colonial times. And tax policy often distinguishes between property utilized in different ways (eg. personal vs. business). I doubt you’d convince a judge that a tax that varies based on whether property is unused impinges on some fundamental right in a materially different way.
    - AdrianB1 4y ago
      This is not what I addressed with my comment.
humanistbot 4y ago
Not OP, but the limiting principle is democracy. That's what gets you off the slippery slope. A tax on vacant homes passed a referendum, but barely at 54.5%, and SF is probably the least landlord-friendly city in the US. Nobody is proposing city taxes on unused guitars, boats, or graphics cards. That would never pass. There is no public policy benefit to doing so, other than generic tax revenue. And if it did, I would move and feel comfortable doing so because I would not want to live in a city whose majority voting population is bananas.
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  Unfortunately moving the house is not an option, otherwise these taxes would be almost fine (as long as you have a choice).
beej71 4y ago
If society got pissed off enough about your unused guitar, you betcher ass they'd pass a law taxing it. It's not The Government you're up against--it's The People!

Overtonwindow 4y ago

A better argument would be that the government cannot force the person to enter into a contract with a private party.

Retric 4y ago
They aren’t, owners could for example occupy their own property or sell it.
camgunz 4y ago
No one's being forced (which is a synonym of compelled) to do anything. Taxation is not compulsion.
- rgifford 4y ago
  It's pretty coercive. Taxes are levied against transactions. A tax in the absence of a transaction is really just a fine. And fining people for not selling something violates most folks conception of basic property rights and privacy. I get that the city is looking for a way out of 50 years of systematic underdevelopment, but this just feels wrong. I don't trust government overreach to fix decades of bad governance.
  - actually_a_dog 4y ago
    You've got an easy, built-in way to avoid the tax if you don't want to pay it.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    Most people don't think you should be able to buy up a precious thing and squander it. Locke--the guy who came up with life, liberty, and property, based the property right on the owner's ability and duty to improve. Leaving apartments vacant doesn't sound like improvement. Taxes also aren't coercive; even SCOTUS hasn't held that. They've held that benefits can be, but not taxes. That's a right-wing anti-tax talking point that has no other principle. What amount wouldn't be coercive? Under what conditions would it be not coercive? What taxes are and aren't coercive: gas taxes, capital gains taxes, sales taxes? The idea is to just say "taxes are coercive" and close the book, which Grover Norquist might buy, but we've got a civilization to run so we need to do better.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mdmglr 4y ago

> A vacancy tax no more compels someone to rent their property than an income tax compels me to be unemployed. This analogy doesn’t make sense to me. Perhaps you can clarify.

meepmorp 4y ago
You're not required to rent, but you would pay the tax if the property is unrented. You still have the option of not renting, but that's no longer a cost free choice.
- barelysapient 4y ago
  The property owner already pays property taxes so it’s not ‘free’.
  - meepmorp 4y ago
    Yes, but that cost is independent of rental status. The purpose of the tax is to introduce a cost associated with rental status.
camgunz 4y ago
People automatically equate taxation with fines and coercion, but they're separate concepts. The best example is the income tax. If we slap taxes on things we don't want people to do, then why do we literally tax work, a thing we want almost everyone to do? So taxes aren't fines or fees, and they don't force you to stop doing something you want to do or do something you don't want to. People still buy groceries despite sales taxes (which, again, we want people to buy stuff). Thus, the argument that a vacancy tax compels rental property owners to rent their places falls. I'm not compelled by income tax to be unemployed, nor am I compelled by sales taxes to purchase no goods, nor are owners compelled to rent their places.
- hgdfhgfdhgdf 4y ago
  [flagged]

rodgerd 4y ago

The Supreme Court has demonstrated that it doesn't really care about the lawful basis of cases; it's just a question of supplying an argument in the hope that they'll legislate the Heritage Foundation's roadmap for you.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

Imagine a law that states that you will pay a tax if you don’t run Microsoft Windows on your computer. You are of course free to not run Windows on your computer, but you will have to pay a tax for that.

voisin 4y ago

A landlord can’t unilaterally opt out of the vacancy tax though. It takes a tenant to agree to rent it and if society has done a shit job collectively to make the area viable for tenants (due to lack of crime or amount of foot traffic or tenants working from office) then the landlord is penalized with taxes for something the landlord can’t control. Paying income taxes is the “cost” of having income. You can opt out unilaterally. The analogy is wrong.

jasonpeacock 4y ago
The landlord can move into the property themselves, sell the property, or make the property more appealing to rent. There is plenty the landlord can control. What this tax does is say the landlord can't just sit on empty properties without penalty. Heck, the landlord could even work collectively with society to make the area viable for tenants!
- voisin 4y ago
  > The landlord can move into the property themselves, sell the property, or make the property more appealing to rent. The Landlord occupying vast swathes of vacant space in its portfolio is the same as it being vacant. You realize landlords don’t have 1 employee for every employee it’s tenant has, right? That doesn’t scale. Selling just transfers the issue to someone else. Making the property more appealing isn’t as groundbreaking a proposition as you might think it is. Every landlord with vacancies in the country is trying to do just that. Implicit in your entire statement is that somehow Landlords are choosing to keep space vacant, against their own business interests, to… what? Spite the community? It makes no sense what you are saying. They are being punished with this tax while already paying property taxes, utilities, security, maintenance, etc, when the issue is that a pandemic hit and everyone started working from home. Now they should be punished with another tax because the angry masses want to shift the tax burden to them. Democracy at its worst.
  - arretevad 4y ago
    Selling doesn’t transfer the “issue” to someone else. It houses someone in need.

yonran 4y ago

> A vacancy tax no more compels someone to rent their property than an income tax compels me to be unemployed This is a bad analogy because an income tax is supposed to be for raising revenue, and it is generally understood that it should not be too high that it discourages too much economic activity. On the other hand, the Proposition M vacancy tax is explicitly intended to “disincentivize prolonged vacancies” by taxing up to $20k per unit per year (https://voterguide.sfelections.org/en/tax-keeping-residential-units-vacant https://voterguide.sfelections.org/en/tax-keeping-residentia...), which the plaintiffs argue violates the Ellis Act which says that homeowners have the right not to be in the business of being a landlord (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...).

camgunz 4y ago
> On the other hand, the Proposition M vacancy tax is explicitly intended to “disincentivize prolonged vacancies” Disincentivizing (hopefully not an actual word) is not compulsion. > the plaintiffs argue violates the Ellis Act which says that homeowners have the right not to be in the business of being a landlord This may be true; my legal knowledge is limited to being overzealously pre-law so I'm not an expert in CA law. That said, this sounds like a stupid law corrupted by landlords to duck housing rental regulations... OK checked Wikipedia and that's confirmed. Anyway I don't dispute this claim, just the Takings Clause argument, which again is very very bad.
quantified 4y ago
Wouldn't renting the unit out be economic activity (rent flows to landlord, household does house things, definitely economic)? Seems to discourage the lack thereof.
- yonran 4y ago
  Yes, the vacancy tax encourages economic activity, which is the opposite of the income tax which has a side-effect of reducing economic activity. Another reason that camgunz’s analogy is flawed. According to the plaintiffs, the problem with the vacancy tax is that the city is not supposed to force homeowners into the business of renting that they do not want (Ellis Act https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&division=7.&title=1.&part=&chapter=12.75.&article= https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...). It is similar to the Obamacare individual mandate, which also forced people to enter the marketplace, which Congress is not allowed to do by the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution. But in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the US Supreme Court said that the individual mandate is just a tax and not a compelled transaction, since “It may often be a reasonable financial decision to make the payment rather than purchase insurance, unlike the “prohibitory” financial punishment in Drexel Furniture” (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/519/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/519/)

linooma_ 4y ago

How would you feel if the government would tax you for being unemployed?

AdrianB1 4y ago
Like regular citizens around the globe that are taxed for any reason the government wants. Taxes were also used as a way to express the power of the mighty during most of the history, the original meaning of an income source for shared public services (aka "government") was long lost. If one thinks about universal oppression, discretionary taxes would be number one.

rgifford 4y ago

Why are these properties vacant? I'm pretty familiar as a renter and property owner with tenants rights in SF. If I were to buy a duplex in the city I would never ever ever rent out the extra unit. I'd lie about tenancy, ask a friend to pretend to rent it, or pay this proposed tax rather than rent it out. I'd recommend the same to everyone. Tenants are a liability for landlords in SF. You cannot end a tenancy, not with any amount of notice. That's a big deal and a huge policy mistake. Really messes up incentives. Let's say you and your partner have a duplex with two 2B/2BA units. You eventually decide to have kids and your parents are retiring. You want them to move into that unit so they can be near and babysit now and again. You could evict, but it's going to be costly and time consuming especially if the tenants are protected. Lawyers are going to tell you to buy the tenants out. Tenant buyouts in the city are usually mid five figures and they end up restricting some of your uses of the property forever. It will take months (maybe more than a year) and may end up creeping up towards six figures. You would've been better off never renting it out in the first place. Landlords aren't idiots and they aren't evil, at least not more so than anyone else. Put yourself in their shoes and figure out how the incentives would cause you to act. IMO it's as simple as fixing the policy issue: Landlords can terminate tenancies in good faith with two years notice. Seems very fair for everyone and I bet you get reduced vacancies without needing to increasingly ratchet up heavy handed market interventions that are themselves prone to unintended consequence.

camgunz 4y ago
I mean, very few of them are; SF's vacancy rate is crazy low. If the dynamic you're describing exists, very few people are doing it. Places with even stronger renters rights regimes have higher vacancy rates. SF's problem is just supply.
- rgifford 4y ago
  The vacancy rate doesn't tell the whole story. Short term rentals and self reporting likely mask the effect I've mentioned. I generally agree, SFs problem is 100% supply. But I think that ends up being caused by slow approval processes and highly restrictive tenants rights. Why would you ever subdivide your property in SF to add another dwelling unit? You can't give a tenant any amount of notice to end a tenancy. You can't ever merge those units back together. SFs property market is really crazy in this regard: older buildings with lots of units are often worth less than large single family houses. Properties with tenants sell for 25-50% less than vacant comparables.

JuniorBalleg 4y ago

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snapplebobapple 4y ago

Well, i can tell you the around 50% tax rate where i am has compelled me to be far less employed, so your argument on that front is wrong.

camgunz 4y ago
I live and work in Amsterdam, so I cancel out your anecdata.