Our property taxes stay relatively constant via Prop. 13, while price appreciation is great given all the growth control.
We do not make it easy for absentee owners to "casually lease" out their holdings. Our tenant laws are some of the more stringent in the entire country and if we were to relax them, all the longtime middle or low-income residents protected by them would might washed out immediately. Furthermore, it just wouldn't happen politically because no one would vote for it. We are a city of 2/3s renters.
Yes, the mismanagement is popular with the incumbent renters (and many property-owners). But people need to understand the potential fixes, even if the best fixes look politically impossible in the short term. As the pain of the current mismanagement increases, big changes will become thinkable. The current setup isn't even that good for all renters (and potential renters) – just a tenured subset.
Maybe absentee landlords (and businesses and holding companies) shouldn't get Prop 13 tax protection. Maybe when the effective tax basis (Prop-13-limited) is wildly out of whack, the yearly increase should be higher than 1%, as a catch-up. (Same with rent control.)
Maybe new tenants, in new construction, should be under a different regime (like how newer construction skips rent control), to enable healthier turnover while 'grandfathering' in the (dwindling) lower-income population.
Your writing has been excellent on causes, but fairly quick to cut short discussion of possible solutions because of current political taboos. But a deeper discussion of unpopular options – that would in fact work very well – is the only way to fix that unpopularity.
We do not make it easy for absentee owners to "casually lease" out their holdings. Our tenant laws are some of the more stringent in the entire country and if we were to relax them, all the longtime middle or low-income residents protected by them would might washed out immediately. Furthermore, it just wouldn't happen politically because no one would vote for it. We are a city of 2/3s renters.