If This Doesn't Work, We'll Try Beatings

Retail vacancies are increasing in San Francisco: [bold added]

In the Castro neighborhood (Chron)

A 2018 study by the North Beach Business Association, Telegraph Hill Dwellers and North Beach Neighbors concluded that the commercial property vacancy rate in North Beach is 10.25 percent, double the rate recorded by the same group in 2015....

According to the association’s study, many factors contribute to the sharp increase in vacancies, including seismic retrofits and numerous construction projects that keep pedestrians away. The study also reports that only two property owners control 21 percent of the vacant properties in the neighborhood.

San Francisco’s cumbersome permitting processes and strict formula retail controls also make it difficult to find tenants, said David Blatteis, board chairman at Blatteis Realty,

Progressive politicians don't think that the high cost of operating is the reason that spaces are empty but greedy landlords who are holding out for more:

Supervisor Aaron Peskin sees another culprit: landlords who intentionally keep their properties vacant until they can extract higher rents from potential tenants. Now he wants to repopulate those storefronts by taxing property owners with consistently empty units.

“This is by no means meant to be a revenue generator,” Peskin said Tuesday. “It’s meant to be a behavior changer.”

The proposed fine is $250 per day per unit. Owners of hard-to-rent properties that have mortgages may as well kiss off their equity and turn the keys over to the bank. No way are they going to service the debt, pay property taxes, insurance, and utilities and pay the vacancy fine.

Easily foreseeable: the banks will stop writing new loans, and the blight will spread.

Also foreseeable: after more sections of San Francisco have been ruined, the politicians will say that the socialist experiment would have worked were it not for the greed of property owners.