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S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

sfchronicle.com

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Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#61

Post by thewildginger »

baggy_trough wrote: post #2

Definitely 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.

Shelter 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?

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#62

Post by paulpauper »

The 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.

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#63

Post by camgunz »

rgifford wrote: post #31
camgunz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one's being forced (which is a synonym of compelled) to do anything. Taxation is not compulsion.

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.

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.

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#64

Post by actually_a_dog »

ecf wrote: post #34

So many lazy landlords in this thread who don’t provide any benefit whatsoever to society.

That'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.

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#65

Post by AdrianB1 »

bubblethink wrote: post #52
onos wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The landlords are free to move out of SF as much as tenants are. Nobody is held at gunpoint.

They cannot move out taking the houses with them. Not at gunpoint, but still not able to move it.

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#66

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

camgunz wrote: post #5

"“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 undemo…

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.

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#67

Post by dragonwriter »

camgunz wrote: post #63
rgifford wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> 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).

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#68

Post by yonran »

koolba wrote: post #23

This 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?

Oakland also has a vacancy tax (2018 Measure W, 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/sm...).

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#69

Post by humanistbot »

rgifford wrote: post #31
camgunz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one's being forced (which is a synonym of compelled) to do anything. Taxation is not compulsion.

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.

> 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.

Re: S.F. landlords, property owners sue to block voter-approved vacancy tax

#70

Post by yumraj »

I 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.

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