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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

#71

Post by camgunz »

mdmglr wrote: post #29
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…

> 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.

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.

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

#73

Post by camgunz »

ProAm wrote: post #32
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.

> Taxation is not compulsion. It's the threat of imprisonment if you do not comply.

You're making an argument against all laws here.

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

#74

Post by voisin »

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…

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.

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

#75

Post by baggy_trough »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11
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.

> voters love to tax anything no matter what the harmful effects are I broadly share your view of San Francisco's civic culture. But what are the unexpected consequences of a vacancy tax? Practically every problem I think of, e.g. developers getting hit when the market goes down being forced to fire sell, has a simple solution (renting on short-term leases). The only failure mode is market breakdown, i.e. where homeo…

When commenting on a law it's important to read the actual text because it usually has surprising effects.

https://sfstandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Empty-Home...

There are many, but I'll list just one for that great SF flavor. You can exclude a vacant residence if it is currently waiting for a building permit. But the exclusion only lasts one year, no matter how long SF takes to approve the permit. If there are multiple permit cycles, only the first year of any can be excluded.

Build a new large apartment, and it takes more than a year to lease out? As a nice thank-you from SF for your building contribution, you can now pay that vacancy tax.

There is a more general problem here though. This whole thing suffers from Smart Person syndrome, where Smart People will continue tweaking every little detail of life without realizing that they have created a system that is more and more complicated and more and more impossible to deal with.

I don't really know how they are going to be able to tell that these units are vacant. Maybe owners should just lie to avoid the expense and hassle of tracking this. That's also not great.

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

#76

Post by hgdfhgfdhgdf »

camgunz wrote: post #71
mdmglr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 despi…

[flagged]

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

#77

Post by yonran »

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…

> 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-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/sm...).

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

#78

Post by Izikiel43 »

71a54xd wrote: post #53

Regardless of politics, landlords who deliberately keep empty apartments off-market are a menace to society. If CA can't sue these people into infinity I don't know another state that can and no rent-control isn't the answer here... It's literally a bigger problem facing the working class or anyone without a mommy and daddy check than the diamond industry creating false scarcity and still propping up the price of "na…

It's their property, they are free to use it (or not) as they see fit. The solution for all this issues on lack of housing is easy, let people build more. SF is famous for its Kafkaesque regulations and zoning for building.

Remove them, let apartment buildings be built everywhere, and the problem will solve itself.

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

#79

Post by delecti »

paulpauper wrote: post #62

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.

Acquiring property is a rather involved process which is rather difficult to do accidentally. If one wants to avoid all of those challenges, it's rather easy to simply not buy houses which one doesn't intend to occupy. If one already finds themselves facing those challenges, one could also stop being a landlord by selling the house, and avoid them in the future. I hear the property market is pretty hot in SF, so selling the house doesn't seem like it would be an enormous challenge.

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

#80

Post by jasonpeacock »

voisin wrote: post #74
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…

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 u…

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!

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