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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

#101

Post by tomcam »

camgunz wrote: post #95
tomcam wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> housing is a fundamental human need Not sure what that means in practice. If I pay for my own house, what percentage of my income should be set aside to pay for other people's houses?

You were asking for a limiting principle and I gave you one. You're now making a weird insinuation that I think that limiting principle should morph into a tax policy that applies to people who don't own rental properties, which feels like a non sequitur. But, my personal feeling is "at least some", because homelessness is fundamentally a housing supply problem and I think no one likes it, so it sounds like the kind…

> You're now making a weird insinuation...

Not sure how. I am trying to understand your thinking. But the phrase "housing is a fundamental human need" can use some explication. What's the maximum for "at least some"? (Roughly, not trying to pin you down to a particular number.)

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

#102

Post by camgunz »

voisin wrote: post #93
camgunz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All kinds of industries have regulations. You can't go into the medical devices industry and get super pissed at the FDA when they tell you you can't sell your stuff without their approval. You could argue "hey it's my property and I'll sell it if I want to", but that won't work and for good reason. Becoming a landlord is going into business, and there are regulations and risk. Sometimes you go bust. That's life. If…

This isn’t a regulation about how business can be operated. Yes it is risk, and it is punishing someone for already being on the losing end of that risk. It’s like taxing startups for not having found product-market fit and not making sales. Do you support that?

It's not like that, unless your startup is hogging a scarce, universal human need.

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

#103

Post by voisin »

camgunz wrote: post #102
voisin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t a regulation about how business can be operated. Yes it is risk, and it is punishing someone for already being on the losing end of that risk. It’s like taxing startups for not having found product-market fit and not making sales. Do you support that?

It's not like that, unless your startup is hogging a scarce, universal human need.

> unless your startup is hogging a scarce, universal human need.

Like talented engineers that could be put to other social use, just like those empty buildings?

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

#104

Post by Jcowell »

rgifford wrote: post #98
humanistbot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 ren…

> 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.

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

#105

Post by rgifford »

camgunz wrote: post #100
rgifford wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 reco…

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…

> 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.

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

#106

Post by camgunz »

tomcam wrote: post #101
camgunz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were asking for a limiting principle and I gave you one. You're now making a weird insinuation that I think that limiting principle should morph into a tax policy that applies to people who don't own rental properties, which feels like a non sequitur. But, my personal feeling is "at least some", because homelessness is fundamentally a housing supply problem and I think no one likes it, so it sounds like the kind…

> You're now making a weird insinuation... Not sure how. I am trying to understand your thinking. But the phrase "housing is a fundamental human need" can use some explication. What's the maximum for "at least some"? (Roughly, not trying to pin you down to a particular number.)

Pretty much all my tax policies boil down to getting rid of super corrupt breaks to energy and ag, and a 110% tax on income over 10 million, and Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax. Confident we can build some baller cribs on that kind of cheddar.

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

#107

Post by JuniorBalleg »

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…

[dead]

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

#108

Post by rgifford »

Jcowell wrote: post #104
rgifford wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ren…

> 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 mor…

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.

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

#109

Post by camgunz »

rgifford wrote: post #99
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…

Why are these properties vacant? 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 wi…

I mean, very few of them are; SF's vacancy rate is crazy low. If the dynamic you're describing exists, very few people are doing it. Places with even stronger renters rights regimes have higher vacancy rates. SF's problem is just supply.

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

#110

Post by gausswho »

rgifford wrote: post #98
humanistbot wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 ren…

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.

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