zlacker

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

>>dymk+(OP)
Yeah that’s not true

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

>>tempsy+N
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.

>>vlovic+Ub
> 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)

>>greeni+4M
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.

>>tempsy+N
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+Hu1
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+Vz2
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)

>>vlovic+7h4
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)