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.”
Once a world class city, SF is now nothing but 5hit hole. I used to love going there for a day or day and just enjoy the sites and the food. Now you couldn’t pay me enough to go there. We can thank the communist democrats for ruining what once was one of Kalifornia’s and the world’s most treasured cities.
That's pretty much 24-7.
DC did what you suggested and moved more than “20” bums into an abandoned house. They named it the House of Representatives.
DC did what you suggested and moved more than “20” bums into an abandoned house. They named it the House of Representatives.
And just like Dr Zhivago, people are going to return to those homes to find them seized by the local kommissar and issued to multiple families.
See my tagline.
61000? Mt??? That’s inconceiveable.
That is how Portland Oregon is solving their problem. They allow squatters everywhere and police are forbidden from evicting them.
LOL — that was exactly the scene I thought of when I saw the headline.
Yup. One can see it from a mile away.
Q. “How do we get rid of drug addicts and the homeless?”
A. Follow the examples of Salt Lake City and Helsinki. First, give each person a place to live. Second, set milestones for each person to stay in place: be sober, working, and courteous.
And the Democrats who created them? Got a couple of suggestions, but they wouldn't be popular.
The people are homeless because the landlords are charging too much rent?
Insanity!
They are homeless because the don’t have jobs in which they can earn enough to pay rents. Perhaps no job at all…
“Blame the landlords” is communist class warfare. And it is being used by the party that is actively crashing the economy, on purpose.
Some years ago I was the managing partner of an apartment complex in the midwest-a college town. I instructed my manager to charge a rent 5% below market-I wanted to stay fully occupied (she found good tenants) because as others have pointed out, an empty apartment generates no revenue.
And not the first admitted clue as to WHY this situation exists.
Those that I know that keep an empty home in the Bay Area are those that don’t want to be subject to the taxes but still love their home ground and want to be there occasionally. The homes have no debt issues. Most are owned out-right.
The Owners could and did tolerate the cultural mess that is California, they just won’t pay the highway robbery that is CA state income and capital gains tax.
It’s not a “home” if nobody lives there. I detest that smarmy locution. It’s a house or apartment or condo or whatever kind of dwelling it is.
I was just joking about it. These liberals are insane to allow low life’s to squat in someone’s home.
“How do we get rid of drug addicts and the homeless?”
First, the homeless are usually either drug addicts or sex offenders.
The drug addicts are a mix. Some can be saved and others can’t . My brother and my parents were into meth and they died. Other people can come back from meth because they want to.
There is no coming back from fentanyl.
The sex offenders are also a mix. There are statutory offenders who are not violent and then there’s the violent sex offenders.
That latter bunch deserves an overdose of fentanyl.
To prevent people from becoming addicts my recommendation is to enforce a death penalty on drug dealers and every last doctor who over-prescribes. I’d also consider executing sales people who encourage doctors to over-prescribe.
Because a drug dealer by any other name is still a drug dealer.
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