zlacker

I had no idea who Dan Preston was until Tan complained about him, but given

> In 2022, Preston proposed a ballot measure to tax vacant housing in San Francisco.

I think I might just love the guy. Thanks for the awareness campaign Garry!

>>hughes+(OP)
Perhaps I could interest you in some rent control too.

>>onepoi+Zd
Ruins market mechanisms too much. Taxing vacancies doesn't ruin the supply and demand equations.

>>Sabinu+pe
it unfairly punishes property owners in soft rental markets like the one we have now.

i’ve seen an unusual number of multifamily properties listed all over SF last few months.

>>tempsy+If
The market is sending a price signal, wouldn't you say?

>>onepoi+Zd
Taxing vacancies breaks the rent logjam caused by financing agreements that allow you to tack missing rent onto the end but require recapitalization for lower rent.

Individuals and small landlords raise or lower rents in response to market conditions as they prioritize cash flow--it's very difficult to make up for lost rent. It's the private equity financed stuff that is artifically keeping rents too high as they have enough cash to ride across an empty property almost indefinitely.

Vacancy taxes stop the idiocy and force the private equity financed stuff to be market responsive as well.

>>tempsy+If
So? Then they need to lower the damn rent.

This idea that rising property values is a God-given right needs to stop.

Capitalism is supposed to work BOTH directions--up and down.

>>bsder+Qg
not sure what you’re talking about but rents in SF are still very much down vs 2019

market has demonstrated plenty it can lower rents as is

>>tempsy+Dh
Don’t pretend it’s anywhere near a free market as is. It’s nigh impossible to build new or denser inventory there.

>>dymk+Aj
Yeah that’s not true

there’s plenty of half empty apartments all over soma and mission bay

>>hughes+(OP)
https://growsf.org/dumpdean/

>>tempsy+nk
And a vacancy tax would force developers to finish projects or abandon them completely so someone else can at a lower price.

If it’s set where it’s cheaper to hang onto the vacancy until rents rise again and finish the build then, it’s a problem.

>>Sabinu+pe
> Ruins market mechanisms too much.

It's not just that. It's the way property owners in renter-majority jurisdictions buy off just enough of the renters to keep other measures to raise housing costs on the books, which both erases the benefit of rent control even for the people who have it and screws over anyone without a rent controlled apartment twice.

>>tempsy+If
There's no such thing as a property that can't find a renter, only a property whose rent is too high.

Many landlords are bad at math from what I've found. If you're asking for $2400 and no one is biting, it makes more sense to drop to $2200 than hold out for a month to try and get $2400, because at $2400 it will take a year to catch up.

>>tempsy+If
It punishes property owners for creating artificial scarcity through excessive rent.

>>frinxo+Fu
This is a campaign website done very well! I wish more websites were this informative.

>>tempsy+If
> it unfairly punishes property owners in soft rental markets like the one we have now.

Eh? I mean, conversely, allowing the property industry to leave properties vacant unfairly punishes ~all other industries, along with the general public. What's special about the property industry here?

"We should leave people without anywhere to live, and harm the economy in general, to facilitate a small part of the economy" is a pretty weird argument.

(I do think that possibly some individual property investors believe that, rather than running a rather complex and highly regulated business, they are buying into a passive investment magical money machine. These people should probably consider just buying shares in a REIT, instead.)

>>tempsy+Dh
Clearly not enough, if there are still vacancies.

>>hughes+(OP)
Dan Preston is a NIMBY dressed in wolves clothes. Like most progressive agendas in SF they do very little to actually secure more housing. They make for great tag lines to pull support in and NOTHING changes.

>>tempsy+If
as a lifelong tenant, i think it's time that the property owners got punished instead of renters. those poor property owners, what happens if we don't look after them?

>>vlovic+uv
> And a vacancy tax would force developers to finish projects or abandon them completely so someone else can at a lower price.

i tend to favor vacancy tax, but this won't fix the problem with developers. SF needs to reform their review process. this is TLDR but there was a big study about this: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/us/san-francisco-housing....

it's already incredibly expensive for a developer to even go through the review process for a development, let alone build it. a vacancy tax would further deter developers from building in SF (as it's already happening due to the terrible review process)

>>hughes+(OP)
Preston used to represent me before redistricting happened.

His office is accessible and he very clearly cares about the work he is doing. I often see him walking to work and talking to constituents along the way.

The demonization of the man is shocking…

>>greeni+E51
That story is a bit dated. The California laws are forcing municipalities like SF to fix the review process and in fact a new plan was submitted in December and initially rejected before an updated plan was submitted at the end of December. The hope is that this fixes things and if it doesn’t SF is at risk of losing its zoning powers wholesale which may not be such a bad idea.

>>mlrtim+451
> Dan Preston is a NIMBY dressed in wolves clothes.

Citation?

> They make for great tag lines to pull support in and NOTHING changes.

Two questions, independent

* Is that the fault of those advocating for change? Are they failing to introduce legislation or is their legislation not making out of committee or whatever due to opposition? Sincere question

* Is there a candidate which would walk the walk better on actually implementing the popular policies which Dan advocates for?

>>tempsy+nk
And lots of people want to move to the bay, yet the rents are high enough to prevent them from doing that. Weird, huh?

>>vlovic+hO1
the story might be dated but the research that drove the story isn't dated, that's what i was trying to share. the action from the state and the municipalities was informed by a research project from UC Berkeley.

>>greeni+vT2
Correct, I was only highlighting that the news story itself is way late and not really relevant as news. The research around zoning laws and their impact on housing development was known probably 5-10 years ago if not more, the state law changes passed within the past 1-2 years ago, and we are in the middle of the time period of the state enforcing all municipalities to conform or lose zoning privileges and SF nominally claims to have ratified changes to be conformant (the initial plan was rejected by the state and they submitted a revision at the deadline)

>>jedber+HF
Not with rent control. If we're in a low price market, it and a renter snags rent at a low price, he gets you locked in at that low price even when the market recovers.

Rent control incentivizes empty housing during bear markets.

>>toomim+X65
This is true, rent control adds a complicated calculus to it. At first they were doing things like "first month free" to get around it, but the city caught on and made that against the rules too. I wonder if they've looked at how that affected vacancy rate.

>>vlovic+HA4
no this research is new and came out like two years ago. it was a different take on the typical research about zoning. it basically looked at the time it took project to get approved. this was a novel approach (believe it or not)