San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by flaque » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

notJim wrote: post #116

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…

> build more housing and put them in it This is exactly what they want. Their contention is that SB50 doesn't place enough emphasis on affordability, so developers will mostly build market-rate housing. If you build enough market rate housing, the prices do eventually come down, but that takes a while to happen. During that time, a lot of people can lose their homes, especially since lower-income areas can be the mos…

Agreed that SB50 will not fix the immediate homelessness problem; though I disagree with their belief you can't pass SB50 until it also has affordable housing units.

You can have multiple bills, we shouldn't shoot ourselves in the foot just because we have only a solution to one part of the problem.

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

#132

Post by mc32 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

biznickman wrote: post #4

When I lived in San Francisco, the newly built condo building across from me was fully empty (but fully sold) for all the years I lived there. This is a tower in SOMA. There was only one apartment which appeared to be a corporate one that was occasionally utilized. The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level. San Francisco has felt the brunt of this due to their insa…

Some countries in Asia have restrictions regarding ownership by non-citizens. If you’re not a citizen it basically has to belong to a local —could be a spouse.

On the other hand that can be detrimental to the economy depending on how something like that is implemented.

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

#133

Post by newnewpdro » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

Tenant rights are so strong in CA that I prefer to leave my home vacant when I travel for half the year, despite having locals asking if their friends can rent it for that duration.

It would only take a single deadbeat choosing to not pay rent, trash the place, and refuse to leave to make it all not worth my trouble.

In another state where tenant rights are weaker I'd collect rent and kick the tenant out on their ass the same month they stop paying rent.

CA is a great state to be a tenant, not so great for being a landlord.

Developments like Airbnb also change the game drastically. Now you can get rental income without even taking the risks of tenants rights by keeping the terms short enough.

Are Airbnb rentals considered "empty" by these metrics?

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

#134

Post by flaque » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

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.

> You do understand that people advertise apartments available for rent before the previous tenant has moved out...

True, but sometimes people just leave without giving warning, or the next person can't move in immediately. Sometimes, in a limited supply market, the landlord will wait for someone willing to pay a specific price since they know there's no other options.

In San Francisco, that's the case for roughly 5% of the units at any given time.

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

#135

Post by rckoepke » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

sigstoat wrote: post #114

lkbm wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems strange. Surely a management company would happily handle all that hassle and provide a secondary income stream. Sign a couple forms and boost investment income by a few percent? Surely that's not significantly more burdensome than the bureaucratic hassle of purchasing the property in the first place. I guess there's some significant tax/regulatory difference between capital gains from holding property vs. an i…

> Seems strange. Surely a management company would happily handle all that hassle and provide a secondary income stream. unfortunately management companies require managing themselves. even if you find a good one, they won't necessarily stay good, so you're firing them, getting new ones, etc. and i've never heard of one that will let you hand them a property, and then eat all of the risk for you and provide a simple…

Sounds like a new business plan for a new market.

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

#136

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

asdfadsfgfdda wrote: post #22

rb808 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least an American billionaire pays some American taxes. If a foreign speculator makes a lot of money they aren't even paying any income or capital gains taxes here.

They are still paying plenty in property tax. From the city's perspective, you couldn't ask for a better resident. Somebody who pays full property tax and consumes almost no services (schools, police, etc).

The roads, pipes, cables, buses, firefighters, and cops have to go past the empty house to reach the occupied houses on the other side of it.

Even if the empty home consumes no water, electricity, classroom capacity, bus seats, etc., it still consumes police and fire protection services. Someone else's empty home can be used for crime without worrying about civil forfeitures.

A better resident lives in their home, and cares about what is happening in its neighborhood.

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

#137

Post by homonculus1 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #111

GrayTextIsTruth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>not retreat further into nationalism God forbid we feel any natural affinity towards our fellow countrymen. Any alternative is so artificial and forced.

"God forbid we feel any natural affinity towards our fellow countrymen" Such an affinity is not "natural" because no one is born with any sort of innate ability to distinguish among nationalities, much less feel any affinity towards certain nationalities. Any such distinctions and feelings are taught through indoctrination such as nationalistic rituals, media, and the attitudes of those around you. A nationality is a…

There is a good and perfectly natural reason to favor people from our own country: they have to live under the same system as us. They have skin in the game on our team. Someone acting in our country but operating out of a different one can exploit the difference in rules to our detriment (e.g. a Chinese company competing in Western markets, but with the finger of state backing pushing on the scales). On a large enough scale it's a threat to democracy etc. if our group decides that groups no longer matter, and another group doesn't.

You can iteratively, conservatively try to approach an equilibrium where borders and divisions no longer matter and all of humanity joins together in enlightenment. That seems to be the general direction we're going and it's a good thing. What you can't do is unilaterally make a cooperative system out of a competitive one. If you go all at once by yourself you just get killed.

Nationality is a big (and in some cases literal) Chesterton's Fence. It is somewhat arbitrary, but that doesn't make it meaningless.

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

#138

Post by kdamica » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

It's so troubling to see a statistic misused like this. The vacancy rate includes all 'frictional' vacancies, such as the period between someone moving out of an apartment and the owner finding a new tenant, or the period between a new unit being built and a tenant moving in. Because of this, though the vacancy rate can be stable, it's not the same units that are vacant from month to month, and in fact, San Francisco's vacancy rate is extremely low compared to less problematic housing markets.

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

#139

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

forwhomst wrote: post #74

happytoexplain wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why somebody might view that as a counter argument intuitively, but as somebody who cares about the problem in a real, practical sense, it's immediately obvious to me that the point isn't to criticise the city's vacancy rate in a void, but to compare it to the potential waste. In a city where prices are disgustingly high and homelessness is appallingly common, the vacancy rate becomes much more sensitive to…

It's basically impossible to increase housing utilization to 100%. It's pointless to even try. 10% is a healthy vacancy rate. Build 110% of the housing your city needs.

Mathematical nitpick.

A vacancy rate of 10% is an occupancy rate of 90%. To house everyone with a 90% occupancy rate, you need to have 100 / 90 in available housing stock, which is 111.1% of occupation requirements.

If you only build 110% of what is needed, and no one is homeless, the vacancy rate would be 9.1%, or ( 1 - 100/110 ) .

The point still stands. Cities need more housing than strictly required for residents.

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

#140

Post by perseusmandate » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

fuzzinator wrote: post #33

> The ten most populous Bay Area cities listed above have a combined point-in-time homeless total of 63,527 If you add up all the homeless numbers listed for each city in the article this number is actually 23,528. What is considered a healthy occupancy rate for a city? 100% occupancy would obviously not be ideal since there would be no places for people to move to. Are there any direct stats on vacant home ownership…

As I understand it typical occupancy rate is 95%. Looks like there are ~400K housing units in SF (not total bay area).

That would imply there are 20K vacant units just for frictional reasons. I expect the number of these type of vacancies exceeds the number of homeless in almost every city in the US