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

Lots of other people, including me, have pointed out that the differentiating principle is "is X a fundamental human need". Housing is, GPUs aren't.

But to steelman the strawman you're putting up here, economics tries really hard to maximize the efficiency of markets, the idea being if you've got something you can make money with (e.g. a CPU/GPU/book/bike/car/bed you could rent out) you should, and thereby someone gets to use your thing and you get to make a little money. You paint this as some kind of hyper-communistic dystopia, but this is actually the world that hyper-capitalist companies like Uber and Airbnb are working pretty hard to create right now.

This is critical to understanding the anti-democratic underpinnings of this landlord action. There's nothing unconstitutional going on here--it's basic market regulation that States and the US have been doing for literally hundreds of years. There's nothing wrong with policies aimed at making markets more efficient, that's why we have regulations and antitrust.

And besides, rental housing is a market. Hogging supply to artificially inflate market prices is generally a crime. Suppliers in this market are suspected of doing that, so the people of SF are taking action to make them stop. They're lucky they're getting off with a tax.

That said, I'm not a fan of this policy in this case. SF's vacancy rate is super low, and I think that indicates this tax won't result in meaningful revenue or vacancy rate increases. This seems like purely a supply problem. I know there are other places (Vancouver, Toronto, NYC) where "property as investment" has gotten out of hand and municipalities are passing laws to try and address it, but they had way higher vacancy rates than SF.

I could be wrong though. Others have made the argument that SF's market is secretly inefficient, that for one reason or another landlords are reporting their units as occupied when they in fact aren't. In that case, this tax might motivate those landlords to rent their places. I don't buy this though, in particular I don't think many people would leave > $30k a year on the table just to have the option of one day letting their parents move into a unit.

>This is super wrong. Here's Indiana's statute [0]. Nothing about commercial use only.

The key is in the terminology used. A "motor vehicle" is distinctly different from "personal/private transport" from a legal standpoint. The former describes a form of transport used for commercial purposes. It's also why these commercial licenses and registrations are issued by an organization called the DMV.

Traveling on roads is a right defined in common law, only doing so in a commercial capacity is a privilege that can be regulated using licenses. Hard to believe, I know.

>Payne v. Massey (19__) 196 SW 2nd 493, 145 Tex 273. “The court makes it clear that a license relates to qualifications to engage in profession, business, trade or calling; thus, when merely traveling without compensation or profit, outside of business enterprise or adventure with the corporate state, no license is required of the natural individual traveling for personal business, pleasure and transportation.”[0]

>American Mutual Liability Ins. Co., vs. Chaput, 60 A.2d 118, 120; 95 NH 200 Motor Vehicle: 18 USC Part 1 Chapter 2 section 31 definitions: “(6) Motor vehicle. – The term “motor vehicle” means every description of carriage or other contrivance propelled or drawn by mechanical power and used for commercial purposes on the highways…” 10) The term “used for commercial purposes” means the carriage of persons or property for any fare, fee, rate, charge or other consideration, or directly or indirectly in connection with any business, or other undertaking intended for profit. “A motor vehicle or automobile for hire is a motor vehicle, other than an automobile stage, used for the transportation of persons for which remuneration is received.”[0]

[0] https://wearechange.org/u-s-supreme-court-says-no-license-ne...