I normally write about restaurants, business brokerage, and the food and beverage industry, but what’s happening inside San Diego city limits right now affects every property owner in the region. I live in the county, I own property here, and these policies have a way of creeping into the surrounding areas before long. If you live anywhere in the region, this is worth paying attention to.
I have a love-hate relationship with California. The weather, the lifestyle, the opportunity, the sheer quality of life when things are working. But the cost of doing business here, the regulatory burden, the constant squeeze from every level of government: it’s no mystery why residents, businesses, and restaurants are struggling and, increasingly, leaving. The restaurant closures I write about every week aren’t happening in a vacuum. They’re happening in an environment where the government finds a new way to take from the people who built something here every single year.
Today, the San Diego City Council is voting on whether to place a vacant home tax on the June 2 ballot. If approved by voters, the tax would charge property owners up to $15,000 a year for the offense of owning a second home they don’t use often enough.
I want to be clear about something before I get into the details. I have genuine empathy for people who can’t afford to buy or rent in San Diego. This city is expensive, and the housing crisis is real. But this proposal doesn’t solve that problem. It generates revenue for a city that’s running a $258 million to $350 million budget deficit, and it does it by penalizing property owners under the banner of affordability.
If you own property in San Diego, or you’re thinking about it, you need to understand what’s on the table.
What the Tax Actually Is
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who represents District 9 and served as council president from 2021 to 2024, is the architect of this proposal. Here’s the structure:
Year one (2027): $8,000 per vacant home, plus a $4,000 surcharge for corporate-owned properties. That’s $12,000 if a corporation owns it.
Year two (2028) and beyond: $10,000 per vacant home, plus $5,000 corporate surcharge. That’s $15,000 per year, with automatic inflation adjustments after that.
A home is considered “vacant” if it’s unoccupied for more than 182 days in a calendar year and isn’t the owner’s primary residence.
The proposal cleared the Rules Committee unanimously on February 25 and heads to the full council for a vote today. If the council approves it, voters will decide on June 2.
The Numbers Don’t Add Up
This is where it gets interesting. Elo-Rivera’s office claims the tax would affect 5,115 properties and generate up to $51 million in annual revenue. The city’s own Independent Budget Analyst ran the numbers and projects a far more conservative 1,790 to 2,812 properties after exemptions, generating $12.1 million to $23.8 million in the first year.
That’s a gap of roughly $27 million between what the councilmember is promising and what the city’s own analysts expect. Either Elo-Rivera is projecting revenue from properties that will qualify for exemptions, or the IBA is being conservative. Either way, one of those numbers is wrong by a wide margin, and nobody is being asked to reconcile them before this goes to voters.
The Enforcement Problem
The Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors calls this a “guilty until proven innocent” framework, and they’re not wrong about the mechanics.
Under the proposal, the burden falls on the homeowner to prove their property isn’t vacant. The City Treasurer is granted authority to inspect private records. There’s a mandatory 10-year record-keeping requirement for residency documentation. If you don’t file your exemption proof by April 1, a 10% penalty kicks in automatically.
Think about what that means in practice. Every property owner who has a second home in San Diego would need to actively prove to the city, every year, that their home is sufficiently occupied. Miss the deadline, and you’re penalized. Can’t find the right documentation, and you’re taxed.
Property owner Kevin Darnall put it directly at the committee hearing: “The right to keep your property as you like it, vacant, rented, occupied, is the property owner’s right, not the right of the jurisdiction.”
San Francisco Already Tried This
A nearly identical empty homes tax passed by San Francisco voters in 2022 was struck down as unconstitutional by a Superior Court judge in October 2024. The court ruled the tax violated both federal and state constitutions and was preempted by California law.
San Diego Councilmember Raul Campillo raised this concern himself during the committee process, questioning whether the measure could survive a legal challenge. It’s a fair question. If the same type of tax was ruled unconstitutional 14 months ago in the same state, what makes San Diego’s version different?
The honest answer is: probably not much. But by the time it gets challenged in court, the city will have already spent money on the election, the implementation infrastructure, and potentially collected revenue it may have to return.
The Pattern
This doesn’t exist in isolation. San Diego has been on a steady trajectory of finding new ways to extract revenue from residents.
In January 2025, the city doubled parking meter rates from $1.25 to $2.50 per hour overnight. Then it expanded paid parking into neighborhoods that had always been free: Bankers Hill, Kensington, Talmadge, Normal Heights, and City Heights. Residents in Bankers Hill reported paying $900 a month just to park in front of their own buildings.
Balboa Park, which had offered free parking for decades, got meters installed. The public reaction was so fierce that new meters were vandalized with expanding foam and feces, causing $77,500 in damage. The city eventually walked back some of the changes, abandoning Sunday enforcement and making some lots free again.
Near Petco Park, the city created a “Special Event Parking Zone” charging $10 per hour during Padres games and large events. Parking revenue still came in $8.9 million below the city’s own projections.
The city took over 100% control of all parking meter revenue in October 2025, centralizing money that previously went partially to neighborhood parking districts.
Now it’s a tax on vacant homes. The framing is housing affordability. The mechanism is revenue generation.
What This Won’t Fix
Let me address the stated purpose of the tax, because it matters.
San Diego has a housing crisis. Rents are high. Homeownership is out of reach for many. That’s real, and it deserves real solutions.
Taxing 2,000 to 5,000 vacant second homes isn’t one of them. Even at the optimistic $51 million projection, that number is a rounding error against a housing shortage driven by decades of underbuilding, restrictive zoning, and construction costs that make new development financially impractical for most builders.
The IBA’s more realistic estimate of $12 to $24 million wouldn’t fund a meaningful number of affordable housing units. It wouldn’t change the zoning laws that prevent density where it’s needed. It wouldn’t reduce the cost of building new housing. It would generate a modest revenue stream for a city running a deficit north of $250 million, with no binding commitment about how the money gets spent.
If the goal is housing affordability, the tools exist: upzoning, streamlined permitting, public-private development partnerships, accessory dwelling unit incentives. Those require political effort and sometimes political risk. A ballot measure taxing absentee property owners requires neither. It requires a vote that sounds good to people who don’t own second homes, which is most voters.
What Property Owners Should Do
If you own a second home in San Diego, pay attention to the council vote today. If it passes, this goes to voters on June 2.
If you’re considering buying property in San Diego, factor this into your analysis. A $10,000 to $15,000 annual tax on a property you don’t occupy full-time is a meaningful carrying cost that changes the math on any investment.
And regardless of where you stand on the housing question, look at the pattern. Doubled parking rates. Meters in free neighborhoods. Centralized parking revenue. And now a vacancy tax with built-in inflation adjustments and a surveillance framework that requires you to prove to the city how you use your own property.
At some point, the question isn’t whether any individual tax is justified. It’s whether there’s any limiting principle at all.