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

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

#41

Post by macinjosh » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:03 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…

> The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level.

If the property tax is paid and the maintenance is kept up what is the problem created solely by the fact some homes are empty? The only reason these properties have such high values is because there is a demand that is not being supplied. Supplying more housing makes this a non-issue.

> San Francisco has felt the brunt of this due to their insanely restrictive development laws.

This is the real issue. Governments restrict housing supply for whatever misguided reasons and prices go up, those prices make it a good place to park cash. Government should stop picking winners and losers.

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

#42

Post by davidw » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #14

You can't build yourself out of the housing crisis when the problem is one of distribution, not one of supply. The idea that housing should be treated as an investment is, itself , the problem. How can you want housing to be affordable while also wanting housing to gain in value, i.e. increase in cost? These are completely contradictory aims. Zoom out for a second and consider how wild it is that we turned a life nec…

> supply

It is (mostly) one of supply, though. California has massively underbuilt over the past decade.

If an empty condo were an asset that didn't appreciate in value because of the scarcity of housing, maybe those wealthy people would sell them and invest in the market or companies or something else.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-th...

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

#43

Post by api » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:04 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…

A few starter ideas:

(1) Repealing prop-13 is probably a non-starter but we could probably get away with repealing it for non-owner-occupied homes. Prop-13 was meant to prevent people from being driven from their homes by property tax increases, not to protect speculators from being taxed.

(2) Levy a substantial additional property tax on residential properties that are not currently occupied by either the owner or a renter (for more than e.g. 6 months). These should at the very least be on the rental market.

(3) Subject all real estate purchases and investments to KYC/AML and other rules. AFAIK one of the things driving this loony real estate speculation is that RE has become a preferred vehicle for money laundering after KYC/AML made other financial investments less attractive for that.

(4) Tax foreign (non-US-citizen) purchases of residential real estate. Yes they'd set up shells and recruit locals to be proxy buyers, but at least this would give them more hoops to jump through and would probably reduce the extent of the problem.

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

#44

Post by zapita » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #29

ahelwer wrote: post #14

You can't build yourself out of the housing crisis when the problem is one of distribution, not one of supply. The idea that housing should be treated as an investment is, itself , the problem. How can you want housing to be affordable while also wanting housing to gain in value, i.e. increase in cost? These are completely contradictory aims. Zoom out for a second and consider how wild it is that we turned a life nec…

Lots of homeowners in SF who have made huge gains from their property investment pay lip service to their liberal worldview by insisting that any new construction must meet the most stringent review and have a very high percentage of units set aside for affordable housing. This way they are able to stop new construction, exacerbating the housing crisis and making their investment more valuable, while claiming they ar…

Also lots of deflection by blaming tech workers for cost increases.

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

#45

Post by flaque » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

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%, and Seattle is 4.8%. But many cities have 10%+ or higher.

It’s pretty disingenuous to say these homes are truly empty or that they’re a sign that “we don’t have a housing crisis” as the Moms 4 Housing group suggested in the article. It’s just a misunderstood statistic being weaponized against building more housing.

If you want to help homeless folks, build more housing and put them in it. If you want your rent to go down, build more housing. If you want your cost of living to go down, build more housing.

[1] https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/ann18ind.html

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

#46

Post by hello_moto » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

damnyou wrote: post #8

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…

Why should different rules apply to foreigners in this context? An American billionaire buying a few condos and keeping them empty has the exact same effect as a Chinese billionaire doing so. Rules around vacant homes are good, though, and I strongly support them.

> An American billionaire buying a few condos and keeping them empty has the exact same effect as a Chinese billionaire doing so.

There are more nuances to this. Chinese millionaires and billionaires don't care about the sales price. They do it to diversify their portfolio to avoid CCP. Some of them did this to launder the dirty money as well.

Their numbers might be small but the chilling effect of outbidding everybody else outrageously will incentivized realtors to spread the "good news" to their customers/clients that "hey... that unit over there is sold $ x million dollars, would you be interested to sell yours as well?"

Suddenly before you know it, the market is f*cked.

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

#47

Post by s0rce » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:05 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).

Why is the city's perspective purely financial? Shouldn't it be driven by the needs of the residents? City residents need housing and the the local business need inhabitants. If you extend your "city" to the limit it would just be a giant physical investment with buildings no one lives in. The city, basically just an investment company would have a lot of money from the taxes and providing minimal services but until that happens the actual residents should drive the policies, in my opinion.

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

#48

Post by all2 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #14

You can't build yourself out of the housing crisis when the problem is one of distribution, not one of supply. The idea that housing should be treated as an investment is, itself , the problem. How can you want housing to be affordable while also wanting housing to gain in value, i.e. increase in cost? These are completely contradictory aims. Zoom out for a second and consider how wild it is that we turned a life nec…

> Zoom out for a second and consider how wild it is that we turned a life necessity (shelter) into a speculative plaything.

Every necessity is a speculative plaything. There are futures and commodities markets for every consumable you could imagine. That's the beauty and cruelty of a (relatively) free market.

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

#49

Post by metalliqaz » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

GrayTextIsTruth wrote: post #30

damnyou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should different rules apply to foreigners in this context? An American billionaire buying a few condos and keeping them empty has the exact same effect as a Chinese billionaire doing so. Rules around vacant homes are good, though, and I strongly support them.

There’s a lot of money in real estate. It’s better staying in the country than going to Chinese firms. If it makes no difference to you, why not favor your own country?

it does make a difference to locals.

the homes are sold for profit, which does leave the country. but more importantly, there is a housing shortage. plus, the costs are kept high.

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

#50

Post by damnyou » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

macinjosh wrote: post #41

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…

> The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level. If the property tax is paid and the maintenance is kept up what is the problem created solely by the fact some homes are empty? The only reason these properties have such high values is because there is a demand that is not being supplied. Supplying more housing makes this a non-issue. > San Francisco has felt the brunt…

If there are homes that are vacant and people that are living on the streets at the same time, that's an inherently unjust situation I think.