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

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

#201

Post by hcknwscommenter » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 7:11 AM UTC

pasttense01 wrote: post #176

frandroid wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If the previous tenant had been there a while the landlord is often going to fix it up some--repainting walls, new carpet, new appliances. This takes some time.

In my building, the landlord takes about a week to repair and repaint before showing the unit.

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

#202

Post by ianleeclark » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 8:50 AM UTC

isoskeles wrote: post #186

ianleeclark wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many would read this and think, well, we should just put the homeless people into those vacant homes! Decommodifying housing sounds like a good idea. People in the streets sounds like a bad idea

They're not in the streets just because housing costs money.

Maybe you're right, maybe they all just living in tents outside where they are completely ostracized from society and treated subhuman. Maybe they like not being able to do anything that requires an address to do. Maybe they like not having a consistent place to shower.

It's a ridiculous thing you've said.

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

#203

Post by refurb » Fri, Jan 10, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

duelingjello wrote: post #185

refurb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeal it for everything. Just do what Texas does and allow deferred property tax payments for when the owner dies or sells. Why should we be giving tax breaks to people who have seen incredible appreciation of their homes. Those are the last people who should be getting tax breaks.

Maybe your parents didn’t teach you empathy when you were growing up, as is so prevalent these days. There are millions of retired people on fixed incomes who bought their homes when they were normally priced. For example, my grandparents bought a house in Los Gatos for $30k in 1969 and now it’s priced at $1.4M. Is that their fault? Why should elderly people, who cannot take the stress of being uprooted and moving, b…

Who said anything about uprooting?

In your grandparents case, they could freeze their property taxes, but when the houses switches ownership, they’d need to pay all the back taxes they avoided with the cap.

Why shouldn’t your grandparents have to pay current property taxes? They just had a windfall increase in property value.

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

#204

Post by m-p-3 » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

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…

Maybe adding an extra municipal taxes (or increased yearly tax rate) for homes that are owned but left empty would be a way to curb those who buy homes solely as an investment?

Maybe I'm forgetting an unintended negative consequences, please do share of that is the case.