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San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

sf.curbed.com

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Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#181

Post by selrumingo »

theklr wrote: post #179
notJim wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle I agree with you, but in practice what often happens is that it takes a herculean effort to pass any bill at all, and politicians are more inclined to declare victory than to pass a follow-up bill. Even if they pass a follow-up bill, it may take until the next legislative session, which could mean a huge delay. This creates incentives to get the bill modified before passage.

However this is an issue of our elected officials being obtuse. California is beyond a democratic supermajority and still can’t seem to walk and chew bubble gum.

The Democratic Party is a mess of conflicting patronage. Sadly, there is still a voting constituency who does not think the wealthy should control every aspect of the lives of the working poor.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#182

Post by refurb »

frandroid wrote: post #122
flaque wrote: post #45

Many of these homes probably aren’t “empty” in the sense that someone’s just holding on to them long term. This article is citing the vacancy rate, which includes rentals where someone left and the landlord is trying to find a new tenant. Any city will have some % of empty rentals, if it didn’t, no one would ever move around. According to the US Census, [1] San Francisco’s vacancy rate is 5.4%, New York’s is 4.5%, an…

> Any city will have some % of empty rentals, if it didn’t, no one would ever move around. You do understand that people advertise apartments available for rent before the previous tenant has moved out... In Québec, the majority of leases end on July 1st and you have a number of people moving on that day which is quite greater than the vacancy rate. You can sign a lease for a new apartment months ahead of time.

Landlords will tell you that lining one tenant up after the other is ideal, but always possible.

It’s similar to the unemployment rate, we call ~4% unemployment “full employment” since it would be impossible for every single person to have a job in a fluid job market.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#183

Post by refurb »

Psyladine wrote: post #76
gradys wrote: post #7

> The census’ annual American Communities Survey defines a home as vacant if there is either no occupant or a temporary occupant—temporary meaning “people who will be there for two months or less.” So this is counting AirBnBs and other short-term rental spaces as vacant. > Vacancy rates are estimated by in-person visits to properties or by interviews via mail, email, or phone. I clicked through to the definition from…

>So this is counting AirBnBs and other short-term rental spaces as vacant. by definition tourist or transient, so correctly so. Unless you want to call every room at the hilton an apartment...

That’s a dishonest definition of “vacant” because vacant implies the unit is available for someone to live in.

Obviously you don’t include hotels because those were never intended as housing in the traditional sense.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#184

Post by dragonwriter »

refurb wrote: post #183
Psyladine wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So this is counting AirBnBs and other short-term rental spaces as vacant. by definition tourist or transient, so correctly so. Unless you want to call every room at the hilton an apartment...

That’s a dishonest definition of “vacant” because vacant implies the unit is available for someone to live in. Obviously you don’t include hotels because those were never intended as housing in the traditional sense.

> Obviously you don’t include hotels because those were never intended as housing in the traditional sense.

Low-end residential hotels (i.e., the ones not catering primarily to extended white-collar business travel) are, in major function, very hard to distinguish from traditional housing. And what stops any other hotel (particularly higher-end residential / extended-stay hotels) from selling into that market is the expectation that doing so (even with units that are otherwise vacant) would sacrifice the opportunity for more rent from richer people, so it very much is a continuous market.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#185

Post by duelingjello »

refurb wrote: post #98
vonmoltke wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeal it for everything except owner-occupied residences. That's the way homestead works in Florida.

Repeal it for everything. Just do what Texas does and allow deferred property tax payments for when the owner dies or sells. Why should we be giving tax breaks to people who have seen incredible appreciation of their homes. Those are the last people who should be getting tax breaks.

Maybe your parents didn’t teach you empathy when you were growing up, as is so prevalent these days. There are millions of retired people on fixed incomes who bought their homes when they were normally priced. For example, my grandparents bought a house in Los Gatos for $30k in 1969 and now it’s priced at $1.4M. Is that their fault? Why should elderly people, who cannot take the stress of being uprooted and moving, be forced to sell their homes and lose their balance sheet savings in the process? If anything, discounts on capital gains and property taxes should be based on both income and balance sheet apart from real estate ownership. What if that were you?

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#186

Post by isoskeles »

ianleeclark wrote: post #31
isoskeles wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not what the implication of the article is. Many would read this and think, well, we should just put the homeless people into those vacant homes!

> Many would read this and think, well, we should just put the homeless people into those vacant homes! Decommodifying housing sounds like a good idea. People in the streets sounds like a bad idea

They're not in the streets just because housing costs money.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#187

Post by OrgNet »

flaque wrote: post #45

Many of these homes probably aren’t “empty” in the sense that someone’s just holding on to them long term. This article is citing the vacancy rate, which includes rentals where someone left and the landlord is trying to find a new tenant. Any city will have some % of empty rentals, if it didn’t, no one would ever move around. According to the US Census, [1] San Francisco’s vacancy rate is 5.4%, New York’s is 4.5%, an…

> But many cities have 10%+ or higher.

Do those cities have twice as much homeless people? (or probably half as much)

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#188

Post by asdff »

kdazzle wrote: post #89
toasterlovin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be instinctively against stuff like this, but I actually think it’s pretty reasonable now. People outside of a given city/country/etc. have no inherent right to participate in that place. Local residents should only allow outsiders to participate if they derive some benefit from it. Now, that said, there may be unintended consequences to eliminating foreign purchases of real estate.

Vancouver, BC passed something like this a few years ago - it’s a 20% tax on all non-resident home purchases. It has actually stopped house prices from rising so fast, but there are still a bunch of empty homes.

Sounds like the tax is too low then. If the vacancy tax is high enough, landlords will have no problems finding a tenant. This is vancouver and sf we are talking about, snap your fingers and you will find a tenant if the price is right. Too many greedy people.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#189

Post by asdff »

klipt wrote: post #91
toasterlovin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be instinctively against stuff like this, but I actually think it’s pretty reasonable now. People outside of a given city/country/etc. have no inherent right to participate in that place. Local residents should only allow outsiders to participate if they derive some benefit from it. Now, that said, there may be unintended consequences to eliminating foreign purchases of real estate.

Just tax the vacant homes at high rates and use that money to build even more housing. Win/win for the city.

tough to do when the councilman has two or three piece of property too

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#190

Post by asdff »

duelingjello wrote: post #185
refurb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeal it for everything. Just do what Texas does and allow deferred property tax payments for when the owner dies or sells. Why should we be giving tax breaks to people who have seen incredible appreciation of their homes. Those are the last people who should be getting tax breaks.

Maybe your parents didn’t teach you empathy when you were growing up, as is so prevalent these days. There are millions of retired people on fixed incomes who bought their homes when they were normally priced. For example, my grandparents bought a house in Los Gatos for $30k in 1969 and now it’s priced at $1.4M. Is that their fault? Why should elderly people, who cannot take the stress of being uprooted and moving, b…

If that were me I'd be smiling ear to ear paying 30k taxes on 1.4 million dollars. That's like the deal of a life time. You can't even find a 30k home in cleveland.
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