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Originally Posted by someone123
I think this is a fundamental flaw in how property taxes are structured. Cities like to encourage improvements on land but improvements result in higher taxes - the tax provides a negative economic incentive.
Income taxes are a much better way to go, but it is not within the power of the HRM to levy those. Perhaps they could modify the commercial tax structure a little to raise fees significantly for empty lots and surface parking. This encourages owners either to keep their buildings or to build structured parking in new developments.
The city should also be strict about unsightly premises. If the landlords don't pay up the city can place liens against the property. Eventually they can take the property and auction it off to developers with a time limit after which control reverts to the city.
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This was a huge issue for Calgary when the economy tanked. You ended up with all these properties where the buildings had been doozed and to some degree construction began and then stopped. So in some cases you had holes that were barely held together with the supports around the whole. In other cases you just had a vacant parcel.
We (City of Calgary) ended up getting changes to the building code (because that's where the power fell in the Alberta context) to fill in the lots that were big holes when they caused safety issues. We did that for 4 parcels; including one that was causing the building nextdoor to shift. There are liens on the properties now.
As to how to stop the buildings from being demo'ed; I've thought about this one and you make a good point - there isn't really much incentive. Unfortunately; I can't seem to come up with a solution and no one I work with has been able to come up with one either. Although I hope that HRM's economy stays in it's constant strong mode for a long time; should HRM ever really get a boom - I worry that it could suffer the same fate if the bust were to come quickly and they not be ready for this issue.