Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

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Jerusalem has the same problem. Lots of wealthy Disapora Jews who buy up apartments just so they can vacation there a few weeks out of the year during religious holidays. A cursory walk through some of these neighborhoods makes it clear that they were not built to actually be inhabited in - no vehicular streets, so no parking or access for emergency vehicles or garbage collection; no easy access to public transportation, no corner shops or grocery stores - why would you need them if you're just going to eat out most of the time or pick up groceries while you're touristing around?

The municipality tried to raise taxes, but it isn't working. The owners' pockets are too deep and the apartments are bought for social reasons, not economic ones. Whatever the city charges, the wealthy will pay.

There isn't an easy solution. If the law were to require occupancy, then the law would penalize honest landlords who do seek to rent out their apartments and deal with frictional vacancy as an investment risk. If their apartments were to be "raided" during frictional vacancy, what then? Should law enforcement accept that the vacancy was frictional and not long-term? How is law support supposed to tell the difference? If the law is too hostile to honest landlords, then they'll sell their investments, and the cost of rent will rise, which is regressive.

The only real solution I can think of is require mixed-use zoning and fine developers for failing to lease the retail space. If the developers sell too many apartments to ghost owners, then the retail won't get foot traffic, so the retail space will fail to lease, causing the developer to be fined, and incentivizing the developer to ensure that he sells to long-term occupants instead of ghost owners.

Then it's reasonable to keep these blocks as is! The definitely bring in more money into the city budget than an average block, and cost much less to maintain (no garbage collection, etc).

From that money, the city can finance things useful for the actual city inhabitants.

This seems like a good problem to have, indeed. But the real problem with empty houses is that if you need to really live in that city, you'll have to pay a lot more, as the number of houses available is "artificially" smaller.

You've put "artificially" in quotes, because presumably you know it's no more artificial than any other kind of supply and demand.

Well the supply is being "artificially" kept down in the sense that a wealthy few are negatively impacting society at large.

I think I agree with you, but it's worth playing the devil's advocate to understand this view more.

How do we know these vacant units are net-negative in societal impact? They take up space and are mostly unused, which is a societal drain. But, the owners pay taxes and use few local resources, which seems like a societal gain.

We could play with the numbers so that they're obviously a societal drain, just assume they've found a way to pay $1 in taxes after creative accounting. We could also assume the opposite, that they're paying for the education and transportation for dozens of city dwellers. So how do we quantify and balance the costs and benefits?

Also, if you live in the city, you are more likely to take an interest in what happens, and complain to the city council, or vote (in places where that's possible).

Except now you have a big dead space in your city which you need to work around.

If it's indeed big, it may be a hassle. If it's a few isles of smaller size, it may be no harder than any piece of infrastructure.

You do realize that a lot of pieces of infrastructure are the bane of urbanists right?

Israel's situation is very unique because a large number people visit there and stay there, as you said, for social and religious reasons. Paris may also fit this category. However, for most cities, this isn't the case. Most cities, espcially in the west, have these homes as investment property and not property bought for social reasons. This is certainly the case in Canada where many of these vacant properties are bought by foreign investors (mainly Chinese) for tax and investment purposes. Nobody comes to Canada for social or religious reasons. These kinds of investments are susceptible to economic incentives.

Mecca has exactly the same problem, for the same reason. The government there encourages it, resulting in giant hotels and condo complexes which are only occupied during Hajj season. The two million people who actually live and work there are being forced out.[1] Mecca is being turned into a religious Disney World.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/14/mecca-hajj-pi...

Plenty of social reasons: people like sending their kids to Canadian/USA schools, and it acts as a status symbol.

There's also a bit of the emotional security blanket that if things go to shit in China, an owner would be able to seamlessly move to the other side of the Pacific. Though that's often overstated IMO.

> Whatever the city charges, the wealthy will pay.

Just a thought... Make the annual penalties rise exponentially with each passing year for any home with sub-50% annual occupancy. At the very least, the ratcheting will provide extremely high tax revenues after a few years, so that absentee owners can subsidize govt affordable housing efforts.

To the contrary, don't make it exponential, just allow it but make it extremely expensive.

If the wealthy will pay whatever penalty tax for unoccupied homes you levy, then let them. Shift a meaningful amount of tax burden on to them and relieve taxes elsewhere. Make it expensive enough that there's at least some pressure against it and leave it be.

That would be way too easy to game. If I'm the rich owner, I rent it out for 51% every other year to reset the clock so I never end up paying a higher rate.

Furthermore I could see the government getting drunk off the high taxes and the massive deficits that would ensue if and when the property is sold to someone who actually lives there.

The renting out part seems like the goal of the rule, but I agree about the deficits part.

Add strong tenant protections to avoid 6-mo leases. Funnel all revenue from that tax into a special fund whose only use can be affordable housing - where all projects must be financed using existing funds rather that future tax revenues or borrowed debt (govt needn't do debt to finance all programs).

So then I just setup shell corporations to sell the property back and forth between every couple of years to reset the tax.

The original idea was the correct one - just make them high by default. Exponentially raising would cause countless headaches and loopholes.

"no vehicular streets, so no parking"

That sounds amazing. I hate the cars on my street, and walk or cycle everywhere I need to go myself.

Until you have to move a couch or something.

That's what bike trailers are for: http://www.bikesatwork.com/blog/four-moving-companies-that-u...

Wow. I wanna see them move a piano next.

I lived in Beijing in 1999-2000. Went to a furniture shop to look for something.

I see there a family of 3 choose furniture and point a fairly large sofa. They leave the sofa there and pack themselves in their Mercedes and drive off.

Two guys carry the sofa out, and pack it on a tricycle, with a remarkably high-placed centre of mass for the whole. One guy rides off with the transport bike, presumably trusting that there is a servant at the destination helping him out to carry it to the apartment.

You can do this, but I suppose it requires quite large income inequalities for people to be willing to work with it.

If you scroll this page down you'll see them doing exactly that. [direct link](http://www.bikesatwork.com/blog/static/images/gentle-giant-6...)

Because there are no couches in Venice?

Vehicles don't have to be huge.

The only decent solution for this problem in Jerusalem would be to house the millions of refugees streaming out of next door Syria. Israel has accepted none so far.

Israel has enough problems already without the refugees.

The US and Saudi Arabia who created this mess in the first place are accepting none so far. Anti muslim sentiment is growing across Europe exactly because Merkel invited these refugees over without asking anyone and then imposed refugee quotas on other EU countries. Now we have nutcackes like Marine LePen and Geert Wilders gaining in popularity and threatening with Fr/Nl exits that would most likely break the EU apart.

You're rewriting history, those sentiments, parties and political leaders were growing in popularity across Europe way before then, that was just gas on the fire.

Israel is next door. Germany, Sweden, Holland, USA are not. 5 million need to be allowed into Israel right now. Surely Israel is not a racist society?

"Need to be allowed"? I'm genuinly curious as to how one can even theoretically come to such a phrasing, regardless particular countries and their politics.

International law didn't have any problem doing just that.

Appeal to authority? In my eyes, "international law" has very shaky moral authority anyway, so it's not very effective.

False. Israel has so far treated thousands in hospital and accepted several hundreds. Given the country's relationships and syrian population general attitude towards Israel and jews, it's more than anyone could reasonably expect.

Accepted several hundreds? That would be astoundingly ungenerous even if true. According to here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/syrian-refugee... .. "Despite its proximity and high level of economic development, Israel has refused to take any Syrian refugees."

If we take a country similar in population size to Israel - Sweden - we can see that they have taken in 2-3% of their population. Israel should at least match that - they are next door! That would mean at a minimum of 300,000 refugees. Open up Israel.

You're just repeating the same things you already said, and don't even acknowledge counter-arguments I presented. You really expect to convince anyone with this rhetorical style?

How do you plan to balance the budget when you're getting rid of tax income from wealthy homeowners and replacing it with a likely subsidy burden to help each refugee integrate?

> Whatever the city charges, the wealthy will pay.

This is extremely unlikely. If it is true, then the empty apartments should be considered money fountains and used to spread prosperity all over the world. Do you mean that they are already taxing to an extent where direct financial incentives to politicians have reached a level that prevents any further tax rises?

I don't see how raids would be a problem for honest landlords. You'd require people to inform the authorities when a place is empty and when it isn't. You pay taxes when it's empty more than x% per year. Authorities check randomly and you pay a fine when the place is vacant even though you said it wasn't.

I don't see the problem.

The solution with fines for vacant retail space seems very inefficient and a bit unfair, since the developer can probably do very little once they sold appartements, and has little influence on whether they are vacant or not.

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