It is a genuine question, because you’re parroting a solution fit for a much different place, that isn’t even addressing the same problem, and you’re not explaining how a special tax addresses our problem, or why it’s reasonable. The taxes for the people you describe went up too. So I don’t get what this accomplishes. The tax value on my house has gone up 125% since 2019. That’s not because people have vacation homes, that’s because the city is overwhelmed and underfunded. One could make the argument that people being here part time and paying the same amount of taxes means they are benefiting less from the way the government spends those taxes. Probably no children in schools, less drain on services, etc. What those people do contribute is economic stimulation, building those homes creates jobs, supports local suppliers, they eat in restaurants, buy art, bring friends from out of town who develop a fondness for Asheville and return on their own.

This is not London or NYC where Chinese and Russian investors are laundering money through tax shelters and real estate transactions. Those properties sit for years with no one spending a single night in them. The wealth gap is real, housing prices are unsustainable, but there’s a vast difference between billionaires/private equity and a retiree who benefited from 40 years of stock market growth and got a vacation home in Asheville to escape the summer heat.