This isn't about forcing people from their property.
This is about a building with a certain code (retail) which has a particular purpose, and that purpose isn't being fulfilled. Taxing to change this mis-behavior is good.
This is about a building with a certain code (retail) which has a particular purpose, and that purpose isn't being fulfilled. Taxing to change this mis-behavior is good.
If you want to talk about using the law to prevent situations like this, then it needs to be a law unto itself rather than something incorporated into the tax code.
Agreed. I know that the businesses still surviving in my Downtown are doing just that. Surviving.
If property taxes increased on all retail buildings in the downtown, rents would surely increase as a result, and the businesses that can make a buck currently would probably have to close up shop and move farther out into the city.
Perhaps raising retail property taxes on buildings that sat empty might be a better solution? But then I suspect that all of those empty buildings would become filled with "fake" retail businesses... like a shoe shop that only opens up for 1 day a month or something.
Where my town in concerned, there is indeed a LOT of old money and I suspect that the current owners are too busy spending their family fortune... which will run out eventually if they neglect the family's historic rental properties.