South Lake Tahoe Residents Reject Proposal to Tax Empty Houses
Homeowners faced potential taxes of up to $6,000 per year for houses left unoccupied for more than six months.
Voters in the mountain resort town of South Lake Tahoe in Northern California decisively rejected a proposal to tax owners of vacant homes.
The proposal intended to enforce vacancy taxes starting at $3,000 for the initial year, escalating to $6,000 annually for homes empty for over 182 days each year.
If approved, homeowners would have been required to declare their occupancy status by submitting an affidavit confirming whether they had resided in the house long enough during the year to be exempt.
To ensure accurate self-reporting, penalties for noncompliance were part of the measure.
Exemptions were outlined for properties occupied for at least six months, homes under construction, uninsulated summer cabins, and properties impacted by emergencies.
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The measure also exempted active-duty military personnel and individuals absent due to firefighting or other emergency duty.
The city was projected to obtain between approximately $4 million and $8 million in the first year, and up to $20 million annually in the following years, according to the analysis.
The report indicated that there are about 7,150 vacant homes in the region.
Critics argued that the measure violated privacy rights and amounted to a substantial tax hike.
The campaign highlighted that housing affordability is a statewide concern and pointed to environmental regulations as a major obstacle in solving the problem, as development projects are at times delayed or denied.
Opponents claimed that the vaguely worded measure would have broad repercussions for renters and homeowners who might need to live elsewhere unexpectedly for part of the year due to work or family hardships.
They cited examples of other jurisdictions like San Francisco, Canada, and Austria where legal challenges disrupted attempts to enforce such taxes and some jurisdictions rescinded the taxes when administrative costs exceeded revenues.
In November 2022, San Francisco residents approved a measure to tax homeowners with three or more residential units left vacant for more than half the year.
Advocates for vacancy taxes believe that rental prices will decrease as supply increases and owners are encouraged to occupy empty homes.
Some supporters mentioned the thousands of commuters who travel to the south shore of the lake to work at resorts and other establishments, emphasizing the need for housing.
Proponents of the proposal warned of the risk of the region following the path of ski towns like Aspen, Colorado, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where housing became prohibitively expensive for locals.
The group referenced findings from the HdL audit, which reported that approximately 44 percent of homes in the area are unoccupied.
“Each day, we are losing families and long-term residents while gaining more unoccupied vacation homes,” the campaign website read. “Measure N incentivizes vacant homeowners to utilize their properties more frequently and contribute regularly to the local economy or rent to local residents.”
The group asserted that successful implementation of similar regulations in Utah, Hawaii, Vancouver, Kyoto, Japan, and other locations indicated that vacancy taxes could help ease housing availability shortages.
