A judge struck down San Francisco's attempt at a pied-à-terre tax in 2024, ruling it unconstitutional. And despite the usual chorus of progressive lawmakers insisting that someone should be doing something, state legislators aren't exactly lining up to take another swing at it.

Here's why: California's property tax framework, anchored by Proposition 13, creates a legal minefield for creative new levies. You can't just slap a special tax on a specific class of property owners because it polls well. The courts want to see constitutional authority, and right now, that authority isn't there.

Look, the impulse isn't entirely wrong. Empty luxury condos in SoMa while families compete for scraps of affordable housing is genuinely frustrating. But the answer isn't another tax scheme that lawyers shred in court while the city burns through legal fees defending it. That's not governance — that's performance art with your money.

If Sacramento actually wanted to address housing supply, they'd focus on the things that are provably within their power: streamlining permitting, reducing regulatory costs on new construction, and stopping the bureaucratic hostage-taking that makes building anything in this state a decade-long ordeal. More housing units, not more tax categories.

The pied-à-terre tax was always more about symbolism than solutions. And now that a court has confirmed what skeptics already knew, maybe we can redirect that energy toward policies that actually survive judicial review — and actually produce housing people can live in.