Vacant properties are useless and help keep rent higher than most households can afford. I support this!

Vacant and blighted properties are places where new businesses can thrive and homes can be built. Property owners who allow their properties to remain vacant or blighted should be taxed until they take action. Sacramento is a beautiful city doing a lot of things right, and focusing on making the grid and surrounding areas lively, vibrant, and operational is critical to continuing to enhance our city. If you’re wealthy enough to own property in the core and do nothing with it, you’re wealthy enough to pay taxes on it to support our city.

Sacramento needs this, especially along J Street in the downtown core. I support!

Vacant property is a burden on our city in many ways, including lost tax revenue, underutilized services, and the physical blight of empty buildings and land. This burden is currently supported by the people and our collective city. Warehousing of properties should be discouraged and it should not be a viable approach for locations to dtay vacant or underutilized for 20+ years. We should incentivize uses that will increase housing supply and lower rents for our collective good. I support the creation of a vacancy tax that includes empty lots, buildings, and underutilization such as surface parking lots in the center city/grid area.

I am in strong support of a vacancy tax! Sacramento is a city that is meant to be lived in and enjoyed by people and small businesses. Allowing property owners to hoard empty space and let it rot erodes the community. If you’re not going to use it or fix it, then you must be incentivized to sell it to someone who will make use of it.

In full support of this. Other major cities have implemented vacancy taxes with positive results. Oakland has a flat $3k–$6k “used <50 days/yr” tax. It’s actually brought in around $10M in the first couple years, with a big slice going to illegal-dumping cleanup, code enforcement, and homelessness/affordable housing. It’s one of the cleaner examples of a vacancy tax that funds very visible basics. Berkeley’s Empty Homes Tax (effective 2024) charges $3k/$6k and doubles in year two; it’s too new for results yet. San Francisco has a commercial vacancy tax (per-foot fee that escalates each vacant year) that’s pulled in a few million so far—some compliance gaps, but it’s pushed a bit on pricing/leases. The residential “Empty Homes Tax” was struck down in 2024, so no impact there.

Property owners have the right to do as they please in regards to the real estate that they own. By implementing this program they will be coerced to either rent their properties to higher risk tenants, make improvements that do not make sense financially, sell, or face penalties. Not everyone has the financial ability or correct partners to improve their properties immediately, and they should not be face pressure which forces them into relinquishing their property to someone with deeper pockets while they accumulate their own capital to complete their projects when they wish.

The knee jerk reaction to vacant properties is that they are BAD, however, no one knows the financial situation or future intentions of the owner. Penalizing them for not using their property is violating their right to quiet enjoyment of their own property.

Vacant lots and buildings pose fire risks, waste valuable housing opportunities, and lead to neighborhood decline. Absolutely we should be taxing property owners who let their buildings and property sit vacant in the city limits.

As a resident of District 4 I will fully support any initiative designed to remove blight and abandonment from buildings in the central city. These empty parcels and abandoned should be used for housing, retail, and entertainment. Downtown and Midtown will thrive once we solve this problem.

My parents in Land Park have empty houses on all sides. It's creepy. The house across the street has been properly maintained, yet empty for twenty years now! It's insanity!