
NYC Has 100k-250k Overpriced Vacant Apartments, 63k Homeless Families - cimmanom
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/247-977-stories-vacant-city-priced-reach-article-1.3892656
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XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
If you want to disincentive properties sitting vacant you can do something
like Vancouver: [http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-
ta...](http://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-tax.aspx)

For whatever reason I like the idea of raising property tax and giving a tax
credit if your property is at or near full occupancy. If you goal really is to
provide enough cheap housing that no one is missing a house, then you might
want to give a housing tax credit for every person you house in a legal space.

Rent control only helps people that already live in a neighborhood, housing
assistance requires a good bit of regulation & has stimga attached. If you
target the renter instead you can just leave it to the market.

~~~
cimmanom
NYC does have something like that now. Both homeowners and renters are
eligible for a property tax credit. But the rent credit is only available if
rent is less than $450/mo, which is... impossibly low.

~~~
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
450\. Yikes that reads as pretty out of date/touch.

For those wondering here is zillow returning zero results under those
conditions: [https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/New-York-
NY/house,cond...](https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/New-York-
NY/house,condo,apartment_duplex,mobile,townhouse_type/6181_rid/0-114112_price/0-450_mp/41.063045,-73.489952,40.429962,-74.379845_rect/10_zm/)

Also making a tax credit like that without a gradient produces some pretty
nasty effects.

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cimmanom
The odd thing is that the credit is fairly new - IIRC, within just the last
few years.

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smn1234
"For years, development officials, the real estate industry and think tanks
have told us that artificially low rents are holding the city back. Higher
rents, the argument went, would free landlords to make a reasonable amount of
money and serve as an incentive to increase the housing supply." who are these
"geniuses?"

~~~
otakucode
Rent-seeking is a destructive economic behavior. It literally destroys value
from an economy. I have no idea how they might suppose permitting some wealthy
people to get more wealthy by doing nothing of any value would do anything but
provide a vampiric drain on value from the economy of the city.

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dannyw
Property tax should be: \- based on value of unimproved land; to encourage
development \- include a tax-rebate per full time resident living there

Positive incentives are responded to better than a vacancy tax.

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thrownaway954
"and 27,009 held off the market for unexplained reasons"

the title of the article is sensationalized. most off the apartments have a
legitimate reason for being vacant while there were only 30K that they
couldn't find a reason for.

~~~
sp332
> Additionally, many of the 75,000 temporary apartments are pied-à-terres,
> weekend or vacation crash pads for the rich, up from just 9,282 in 1987.

And 3x that number that are vacant for pretty questionable reasons.

~~~
thrownaway954
"weekend or vacation crash pads for the rich"

how is that even remotely "for pretty questionable reasons"? it states right
there that the rich are using them as second homes and party pads which is
very common.

what ticked me off about the article is they claim that there are close to
250K vacant apartments cause they are "priced out of reach for most renters"
which is totally false.

~~~
sp332
When there are so many homeless people in the city, renting out an apartment
that will only be used for a few weekends a year is morally questionable for
both the renter and the landlord.

~~~
thrownaway954
excuse me, take a step back just one minute.

you cannot make a false statements as "And 3x that number that are vacant for
pretty questionable reasons" and then turn around and use the sympathy card as
justification by stating that what someone is doing with the property they
rightfully own as "morally questionable". by doing so, you are no better than
the author of the article in my eyes.

i don't like it either that people are sleeping on the streets while these
places are "uninhabited" for whatever reason, but the people who own these
places have the right to do with them whatever they want.

~~~
sp332
The people who own and rent these places have a moral obligation to make moral
decisions. A landlord deciding that people should be homeless just so they can
make some more money is probably morally wrong. I'm sure we could imagine some
exceptions, but in the common case I believe this is true.

Your last part about rights seems to be talking about legal rights, which is a
bit irrelevant and also factually wrong. There are regulations on renters and
owners, and there's no reason a city can't democratically decide they want
different regulations.

~~~
dpark
> _A landlord deciding that people should be homeless just so they can make
> some more money is probably morally wrong._

By the same logic, someone who chooses to save money rather than pay to rent a
dwelling for someone homeless is also probably morally wrong.

~~~
sp332
Sure, and this is sometimes reflected in law as taxes and subsidies or
regulations on rent prices.

