Why? Because apparently they need some more incentive to keep units occupied. Also, even though a property might be vacant, there’s still imputed rental income there. Its owner is just receiving it in the form of enjoying the unit for himself instead of receiving an actual rent check from a tenant. That imputed rent ought to be taxed like any other income.
That’s the thing, it’s not a “property tax” that they want, it’s for landlords to have to utilize the apartments for low income housing like they are supposed to. What’s going to happen is that they are going to leave the apartments vacant for 5+ years and then say, “No one wants to live here, so I’m not making money. I have to renovate to draw in new tenants, so I’ll have to increase the cost to cover my cost.” This is just modern day blockbusting, and it’s fucking terrible.
Who says all apartments are supposed to be used for low income housing?
The problem with low income housing is the NIMBY’s, and the very real fact that when you have large amounts of low income housing you get a low socioeconomic area along with all the problems that brings.
What is the incentive for the landlord to keep the building occupied? Why not just immediately tear it down and build luxury apartments?
The incentive is that the building was built with a grant from the government to help initial building costs with the promise that it would be section 8 for X years, but section 8 doesn’t get landlords rich, so they look for loopholes to get around it. One of them is keeping the building vacant for those years and then “renovating” to make more money off of the tenants that aren’t section 8.