[rgifford]

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]

You've got an easy, built-in way to avoid the tax if you don't want to pay it.

[camgunz]

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.

[dragonwriter]

> Taxes also aren't coercive; even SCOTUS hasn't held that

They are, and it has; see McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819). Coercion doesn’t generally make them unconstitutional (coercion is, ultimately, what governments do,the states under their broad general police powers, and the feds, Constitutionally, under more limited powers, but including explicit taxation poeers), though it can when, e.g., states attempt to tax federal institutions (as was the issue in McCulloch).

[camgunz]

IDK if McCulloch established that. Maryland wanted to tax the Bank out of existence, and Marshall clearly addressed that use of taxation, not taxation in general:

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation. A question of constitutional power can hardly be made to depend on a question of more or less. If the states may tax, they have no limit but their discretion; and the bank, therefore, must depend on the discretion of the state governments for its existence. This consequence is inevitable."

This is about destruction, not coercion. In this case, an example of a destructive tax would be "we levy a tax 100% of the value of your property. That isn't what's happening here.

FWIW governments do more than coerce. Ours does stuff like pay millions of teachers and explore space. That takes money, so governments raise revenue. That's not coercion, that's funding stuff we want and need.

[humanistbot]

No, McCulloch said taxation can be coercion, but not necessarily. Maryland wanted to tax every local branch of the national bank $15k/year, which is $350k/year in 2023 dollars. That was seen an unconstitutional state usurpation of a policy that had been approved by the US Congress.

[rgifford]

> Most people don't think you should be able to buy up a precious thing and squander it.

What does it mean to "squander" and who decides? 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 close by to retire 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 in the future. 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.

Most landlords are individuals that own a few units [1]. Maybe a couple decided to buy a second home instead of investing in the S&P500. That's a lot more common than you'd expect. These are the folks navigating renters protections. Large companies don't have issues with them. They hire professionals to follow the rules. Or they build newer buildings so those protections don't apply to them.

And really this is the bleak reality of heavy handed, top down market manipulations: They're not going to hurt the big guys. You're not going to get even with some multinational real estate syndicate somewhere. You're mostly going to transfer wealth between varying shades of middle class. And really largely, you're transferring it from folks that saved for a downpayment and risked a 30 year mortgage and financially put their ducks in a row and those that spent years and years renting while knowing full well they were getting an affordable monthly payment in exchange for not building equity.

My point in saying all this is that usually if you look at a market and see folks "squandering," you probably don't understand the market. There are probably competing incentives that cause that market to be inefficient.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/02/as-national...

[camgunz]

See, the casual way you say "you could evict" makes me think you don't appreciate that that's someone's home, maybe even a family, and you're uprooting them for personal convenience. I think a law preventing that would be a good one.

Your argument sounds like, "if you let landlords evict as much as they like, they would rent their places out rather than treating them like pure investment vehicles." But how does that help renters? Great they can now maybe rent that vacant place, only to maybe get evicted with little to no notice, for any reason?

I think where we want to get to is a place where people who rent homes have stability, and don't get kicked out because their landlord's in-laws want to move in instead. You're not lending a bike or renting out lawn equipment. Families live in these places. Going full "I should be able to do whatever I want with my property" is at best insensitive.

I'll also say that SFs problems seem to be 100% supply related. The vacancy rate is 3% [0]?? That's crazy low. I don't think this is a complex market that's beyond my meager understanding; they just need more supply.

[0]: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/how-many-vacant-homes...

[rgifford]

> the casual way you say "you could evict" makes me think you don't appreciate that that's someone's home...

It's their home and your property. I'm not advocating anything crazy. As that hypothetical landlord your tenants deserve dignity, but it's your property and that has to confer certain rights beyond their tenancy. Otherwise, you don't really own it. You should be able to ask your tenants to leave with some amount of notice. You should be able to plan on your parents living in that unit at some point. Make the amount of time and planning for that very large, say 2 or 3 or 4 years. Doesn't that seem pretty fair?

Restricting ending tenancy in good faith all together creates perverse incentives. It pits your interests as a landlord against your tenants. If you bought a duplex in SF today, it would be in your best interest to do everything you could not to rent out the other unit. That is the problem.

[camgunz]

I mean, not being able to do literally anything with my property doesn't mean I don't own it. You can't run a meth lab in your house--you still own it. Etc. IDK if I'm making a straw man here, but just want to say there's always limits.

I think a year or two is reasonable, but I generally don't like the mechanism of eviction. I live in the Netherlands and they do either fixed term or indefinite contracts here. Details are here [0], but the gist is that tenants get some stability while landlords can chance a vacancy period and raise rents while they're vacant and not rent controlled.

https://www.iamexpat.nl/housing/netherlands-rentals/rental-c...

[humanistbot]

> It's pretty coercive. Taxes are usually levied against financial transactions. Taxing not selling something violates most people's conception of basic property rights.

First off, it isn't taxing "not selling something," it is taxing "buying a 2nd/3rd/999th home that nobody will live in and holding it vacant as an investment strategy." It is a financial transaction in that sense.

Second, baseline property taxes have existed for some time in every US state. If you own a home, you must pay taxes in alignment with how your locality has decided it will tax houses to maintain and operate itself. More expensive houses get taxed more, independent of how much of the local budget is spent on serving the house. SF decided that unoccupied 2nd/3rd/999th houses get taxed more than those that don't.

What if they raised taxes for everyone, but gave tax breaks to homes occupied by owners or renters, with a 1 year grace period? That is effectively the same as this bill.

[ryandrake]

That seems like the fairest way to do it, make it part of your property taxes. Before, your property taxes are $T. Now, your property taxes are $T + $T x F x M, where M is the number of months in the year the property is unoccupied, and F is some factor. For everyone whose home is actually lived in, your property taxes don't change. A supercharged version of the homestead exemption.

[rgifford]

I posted something to this effect elsewhere, so forgive me for repeating myself. I do want to get your take though.

First, the implementation of the fine isn't so important as the fine itself. Most landlords are individuals that own a few units [1]. Maybe a couple decided to buy a second home or a duplex instead of investing in the S&P500. That's a lot more common than you'd expect. These are the folks navigating renters protections. Large companies don't have issues with them. They hire professionals to follow the rules. Or they build newer buildings so protections don't apply to them. We're not going to get even with some multinational real estate syndicate somewhere through a vacancy tax. We're mostly going to transfer wealth between varying shades of middle class. And really largely, we're transferring it from folks that saved for a downpayment and risked a 30 year mortgage and financially put their ducks in a row and those that spent years and years renting while knowing full well they were getting a comparatively affordable monthly payment in exchange for not building equity.

Second, 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 close by to retire 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 in the future. 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.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that most owners letting their properties sit vacant are probably doing it because of bad policy that deprives them of fair use of their property. Not because they don't already realize they're missing out on rental income and would see the light if they had to pay a little more tax each year.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/02/as-national...

[gausswho]

You've framed tenants as a liability rather than an important part of the housing ecosystem, combined with treating second/third/fourth homes as investment vehicles instead of alternatives. I sympathize with how eviction policy creates bad incentives on both sides, but I also recognize that this is largely also about supporting a healthy city of a blend of homeowners and renters.

While I think normalizing vacant properties is a worthy goal, I do think there's other ways of achieving this goal, such as other commenters have suggested around instead of an additional tax, reducing tax write-offs for vacancy, along with a better definition of what a vacancy is. For example your suggestion, the having your friend move in loophole for some non market exchange. This has the potential to subvert the principle of the referendum.

[Jcowell]

> Maybe a couple decided to buy a second home or a duplex instead of investing in the S&P500.

Just want to address this particular point. That’s the problem. People want to use houses as an investment vehicle rather than a place to actually to live in. You want a buy a second, third , or even fourth house fine. But what should not happen is others are unable to live in the same city because people wanted to make more money from a fundamental need.

[rgifford]

People buying a second home are not the problem. A healthy housing market needs rental housing stock. We have to have places for people in transitory phases of life, for people struggling, for retirees that want to live off the value of their house after downsizing or divorcees or folks trying the city on for size.

Supply is the problem and bad governance created it. Why do we keep turning it around on individuals that made rational investment decisions as though they've done something predatory? It seems absolutely backwards.

Build more housing stock. This is it. There's no bad guy, no magic bullet, no righteous fight. We just need to build more.

[gausswho]

Until such build out happens, disincentivizing landlord squatting is where the rubber meets the road from the policy tools available.