A "vacant building" means nothing; there is no reason to believe it's in the right location, will still be vacant next week, or is even habitable. Under construction and condemned units are both considered vacant. You gotta build.

https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/vacant-nuance-in-the-vac...

From your article:

> David says of those 40,000 units, about 32,000 of them fall into categories that would most likely be exempt from a vacancy tax.

> For example, properties that have been recently bought or sold and the new tenants haven't moved into yet, or ones where landlords are currently doing renovations or upgrades.

> "It will not move the needle on our affordability or displacement crisis in any meaningful way," he said.

> David says what the city really needs to do is build more housing.

> "In order to keep the cost of housing to just be increasing at the same rate as inflation, you need to be adding about two percent to our housing stock per year," he said.

> David says that comes out to about 5,000 new units a year.

> But for the past 30, we've only built an average of 1,800 annually, leaving us in a 100,000 unit deficit

Sounds like we need a loooooot more vacancies, like maybe 100,000-150,000 in San Francisco.

The only vacancies that are a problem are all the vacant, unbuilt units above small, 1-2 story single family homes all throughout San Francisco. Those are the vacancies that are killing the city.