Construction Maison

San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin has asked the city attorney to explore legislation to impose a vacancy tax on large property owners who leave residential and commercial buildings empty . During a supervisors meeting this month, Peskin said he continues to receive complaints about the impact of “ghost buildings” on neighborhoods. The problem is, nobody really knows how many vacant homes there are in the city and whether a vacancy tax would be legal or effective in freeing up much-needed housing. In an interview, Peskin cited a 28- unit apartment building at 1656 Powell St. that was vacated after a fire damaged some units in December 2013. It remains empty. The three-story building is in a prime North Beach location across from Washington Square Park . Four businesses on the building’s ground floor — a liquor store, a bar, a Thai restaurant and a seafood restaurant — are open, but the apartments above still have boarded-up windows and a littered lobby. Some work was done in the...

Rodents in the walls, air conditioner on the fritz, and floors falling in. Despite enacting what Dallas city leaders call the toughest rental housing regulations in the country, some Dallas renters say conditions are barely livable and don't understand their rights. Tenants at the Gaston Uptown Apartments in East Dallas are afraid to complain and on the offensive in the fight against rodents. One man sits in an open doorway because the air conditioning is out on one of the hottest days of the year. He says he served in Vietnam. Last year, the city enacted what leaders call the toughest housing regulations in the country to crack down on slumlords. But those who live at the Gaston Uptown Apartments say they do not know their rights. The building sits in the district of Dallas City Councilman Philip Kingston . “I promise you you're not even in the bottom 20% of housing quality in Dallas if you went over there,” the councilman said. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting. Tha...

Capitalism is “a process of creative destruction” according to Austro- American economist Joseph Schumpeter . That is working out right now as new communications technologies are revolutionizing sectors like short-term housing and short- distance human transportation . I use these wordings rather than “hotel” and “taxi” because companies like Airbnb and Uber are changing the very meaning of these historic terms. Much of this is to the good, enabling society to get more satisfaction of human needs and wants from a given set of resources. But Schumpeter’s insight that economic creation inevitably is linked with destruction still applies. Innovations also destroy outdated businesses and products.  Airbnb is the one in the news right now as the St. Paul City Council considers new rules to limit the fraction of rental housing units that can be converted to short- term Airbnb units . That is an issue in many other cities. Airbnb and its small competitors also raise the same issue as Uber...