Since you bring up the notion of Vancouver's empty homes and speculation taxes I'll follow up with the impacts of that:
* These taxes added 8000+ 'empty' homes to the rental pool overnight.
* Many "luxury" condos in development changed into purpose built rental for locals.
* The vacancy rate barely budged and remained stubbornly low.
So while it was definitely worth while to bring in these taxes in order to instantly create more housing, and change the nature of what sort of housing was being created, effectively nothing has really changed in the grand scheme of things. Vancouver still has a housing scarcity problem, and near zero vacancy, and still needs to build much more housing.
I encourage SF to do the same sort of things that Vancouver has done, but they will also need to increase apartment development massively.
* These taxes added 8000+ 'empty' homes to the rental pool overnight.
* Many "luxury" condos in development changed into purpose built rental for locals.
* The vacancy rate barely budged and remained stubbornly low.
So while it was definitely worth while to bring in these taxes in order to instantly create more housing, and change the nature of what sort of housing was being created, effectively nothing has really changed in the grand scheme of things. Vancouver still has a housing scarcity problem, and near zero vacancy, and still needs to build much more housing.
I encourage SF to do the same sort of things that Vancouver has done, but they will also need to increase apartment development massively.