Posted on 10/21/2022 3:20:59 PM PDT by george76
SAN FRANCISCO — Every night in San Francisco, more than 4,000 people sleep on the streets without any form of shelter. In the same city, tens of thousands of homes are vacant without a single person sleeping inside.
“It is devastating to realize that for every person sleeping on the streets tonight, there are 14 vacant homes in our city,” county supervisor Dean Preston said.
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A new report released Thursday by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst Office revealed that a staggering 61,473 homes were vacant in San Francisco in 2021. The number of vacant homes skyrocketed from 40,000 in 2019 to over 60,000 in 2021 — a 52 percent increase in just two years, according to the report.
That means that an estimated 15 percent of all homes in San Francisco are empty, by far the highest rate among major cities in the country, the report found.
“In a city where the cost of housing is out of reach for most working people, and with thousands of homeless people living on our streets, it is immoral and inhumane to have tens of thousands of homes sitting empty,” said Preston. “The dramatic increase in just two years shows the dire need for policy intervention to turn these empty units into places where people can live.”
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In addition to having the highest overall residential vacancy rate, San Francisco also has the highest share of units that are vacant for seasonal, recreational or occasional use — more than 10,000 homes – such as vacation homes.
Homes that are “For Rent” but still remain vacant increased by 142% in just two years. “This data tells us that landlords are holding out on renting their units, waiting for a market rebound so they can charge more in rent,” Preston said. “We need to incentivize them to get their units back on the market and provide housing to San Franciscans in need.”
Meanwhile, 7,754 people can’t afford rent. The city’s most recent homeless census found 4,397 San Franciscans are living on the streets and 3,357 are sleeping in shelters.
The report noted policy interventions that could help reduce the number of vacant units in San Francisco, such as a tax on vacant units.
This November, San Francisco voters will decide whether to adopt an Empty Homes Tax. The proposed law will tax owners of buildings of three units or more, where a residential unit has been vacant for more than six months in a given year. The tax rate is higher for larger units, and it increases the longer a home is kept vacant.
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The report’s authors wrote, “While new housing supply can be a primary contributor to affordability … large numbers of vacant units in cities with existing housing shortages can also impact affordability by further restricting supply. Some units may be vacant due to owner preferences and actions that are inconsistent with policy goals of maximizing the City’s housing stock for residents.”
Three months ago, a biz partner and I bought a fixer at an astounding 50% below market value for $2 million. With its amazing view and post renovation, we expect to get $6 million. However, at this trajectory, we might break even. Lefty proggies don’t even want to live there. Praying that a red midterm helps a bit, but we must endure the childish London (”please never”) Breed.
Turning into Detroit?
We know where this is headed. Been on the wall for a while now.
Don’t enable them for starters.
Don’t hand out free drugs, free money, free food, free phones, etc, and make crime not pay.
Open up mental hospitals again and treat many of those people instead of letting them fend for themselves.
What worked before the homeless problem became a prolblem?
Go back to that.
I can’t believe you are actually even asking that question.
Those homes are vacant BECAUSE of the people who sleep on the streets.
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Exactly right! Clean up the city, impose law and order, and the number of vacancies will sharply decline.
Plank #1 of the Communist Manifesto: Abolition of private property in land and application of all rents of land to public purpose.
https://www.laissez-fairerepublic.com/TenPlanks.html
4000 people sleep on the street because they don’t want to go into rehab and overcome their addiction and thus choose the street. I can feel sorry for people that are forced to live on the street - like young children - but I have no sympathy for individuals who choose that bad lifestyle. We need to go back to enforcing our laws - and removing bad policies such as decriminalizing drugs and theft below $700 - and remove the choice to live on the street.
“How do we get rid of drug addicts and the homeless?”
simple: free bus rides to Martha’s Vineyard ...
GMTA
The ChiComs haven’t released GDP numbers for three consecutive quarters.
Raises a bit of a red flag, don’t you think?...
How long before the city expropriates those houses and turns them over to the “oppressed “?
Single family homes or apt/condos?
I was gonna say...
Instead of a SF poop map, maybe somebody needs to pass out maps to these vacant houses.
For over a decade, the non ChiCom Chinese have been buying homes from the Vancouver peninsular area to the Mexican border and sealing them up to age and increase in value. That has worked pretty well until now for them.
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They are not on the street because they can't afford rent. If they had rent money they would just use it to buy more drugs.
the city should buy them all and rent them, put homeless in them and sell some of them, since their policies created the problem, and the stupid people vote for these assbites that make those policies.
61,000 empty homes...
Fill with 15 MIVs per home...
15x61,000 = 915,000 can be deported immediately from red states to CA and to live in true communist happiness...
Now just have to find homes in CA for the rest of the 50,000,000 MIVs currently infesting the country...
This dunderhead has no idea how landlording works.
Sayeth an actual landlord:
“This data tells us that landlords are holding out on renting their units, waiting for a market rebound so they can charge more in rent”
LL: Bullsh*t. We LL’s don’t sit on empty units holding out for another 5-10% rent while losing 100% every month it sits empty. You’d have to lock in a perfectly paying tenant 5+ years to make up for a few months of ‘holding out’ - not including rent increases, utility/insurance increases, damage, inflation, etc. No one does 5+ year residential leases for those reasons and commercial ones have built in increases to compensate for increased costs.
A unit stays vacant because, and only because, suitable tenants [with verifiable income, decent credit, no prior evictions] are difficult to find. Renting to a person with a bad history guarantees problems down the line [some exceptions, and I’ve made them, but they are outliers]. LL’s also have to keep rents in line with carrying costs or go bankrupt. It’s a math and expected problem issue.
And then:
“Meanwhile, 7,754 people can’t afford rent. The city’s most recent homeless census found 4,397 San Franciscans are living on the streets and 3,357 are sleeping in shelters.”
LL: Bullsh*t. 90-95% of these homeless are in their predicament because they are drug addicts and have no intention of changing their ways. That’s where the money goes. Has nothing to do with ‘inability’ to pay rent, its a priority issue.
Also, no LL knowingly rents to a drug addict - you’re just buying problems [slow or no rent, noise, traffic, dealing, and general scumbagginess we LL’s try very hard to keep out of our properties]. Agreed rents are ridiculously high in SF. If its unaffordable, the solution is to live where it is affordable. I’d love to live in Malibu but don’t for the same reason. If you want to live where you can’t afford, your choice is not my problem.
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