What on earth are you talking about?

It's probably a statement about SF zoning too much commercial rather than allowing property owners to figure out how to use buildings. Or maybe it's a statement about how our building codes make it very difficult to repurpose buildings.

Not entirely sure, but those are my best guesses.

Maybe it’s about rent control and low income housing requirements around building?

If only there were some way for the original person to have written a coherent comment so we wouldn't have to play guessing games?

Well, if you assume California is socialist it all makes sense. There's just one tiny little problem: it isn't, and not only is this office space privately owned but the problems causing these vacancies are probably principal agent problems directly attributable to the structure of the free market controlling them (landlords either want to bet on a recovery or agreed to credit terms that would cascade a single write-down).

>directly attributable to the structure of the free market controlling them

This is completely wrong, city zoning does not allow commercial buildings to be used for housing. Local government literally has direct control of the allowed uses for buildings. Additionally, even if you completely got rid of zoning it is very risky to be a landlord in CA now because of government eviction policies.

As a tenant in CA you can just stop paying your rent and it can take over a year to be evicted. See the show Silicon Valley, where Jared sublets his apartment and it is basically stolen from him because the tenants just stops paying rent. It's so well known that it's become a joke.

The problems here are created by zoning and eviction regulation (i.e. government regulation), not the free market.

Looks like I hit a nerve. I can't help but notice that you conspicuously avoided addressing the explanation I've been hearing for the commercial real estate problems:

> landlords either want to bet on a recovery or agreed to credit terms that would cascade a single write-down

and instead substituted two theories of your own, one of which has nothing to do with commercial real estate and the other of which has zero explanatory power for "why now." We can get to those, but first could you explain why you think the explanations I've been hearing are wrong?

thats an insult to socialists, China’s top income tax rate is far below California’s combined max income tax rate.

Uh? Where did you get that comparison? China's top income tax rate is 45%. I cannot see how that could ever be "far below" what someone's income tax rate would be in California (37% federal + 12.3% state). Mind that the top bracket starts around $140k in China, whereas in the US it's about $590k (federal or Californian).

yeah so we need a new category for California since they set thenselves up to seize more of the means of production than the communists/state capital socialists

Does China have a separate low-tax lane for capital gains like the US does?

yes, 20%

the San Francisco standing committee failed to retain respect for its sovereignty and territorial unity

Ah yes, the famous centrally planned economy of San Francisco, California, USA.