[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.