Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. In this week’s issue, we have stories on: 

• Another court loss for San Francisco’s “empty homes” tax. 
• Spain’s housing revolt.
• Another religious land use case that made it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But first, our lead story on the zoning angle behind a feel-good story about the world’s oldest bartender. 

Basement Bars and the Grandfather Clause

The Washington Post yesterday profiled Irvin Koch, who, at the ripe old age of 103, is considered to be the world’s oldest bartender. 

Koch’s establishment, Irv’s Basement Bar, sits tucked under the home he has owned for decades in Anne Arundel County, near the Baltimore area. The bar was part of the property when Koch bought it in 1963, and the cash-flow from the counter has funded a long-running livelihood ever since. 

If running a bar out of your basement sounds like a fun idea, you are unfortunately out of luck. Koch’s dive is Maryland’s last true “basement bar”: a place that has effectively been phased out by contemporary zoning and building rules. 

As a liquor-licensing attorney for the county told Baltimore’s The Sun in a 2014 profile of Koch, “You can’t do it these days. Nobody could open something like this now.” 

Koch’s venture endures simply because it predated the county’s modern zoning and construction standards. It has thus been grandfathered into a sprawling regime of regulations accumulated over the years. 

To count the ways Koch’s establishment would violate current rules is almost amusing. Reviewing the list is also instructive, offering a window into the bureaucratic obstacles quietly shutting down fascinating “third places” such as Irv’s Basement Bar. 

According to the Post’s chronology, Koch’s farmhouse began as a private summer residence in 1912, about four decades before the county rolled out its first comprehensive zoning ordinance in 1952. 

That early absence of zoning allowed the home to be converted into a commercial inn with a basement bar before Koch acquired the property. Today, such a transformation would be off-limits. 

The zoning code in Anne Arundel County places the property in an R-2 category, which is intended to foster suburban single-family neighborhoods. Under that designation, a long list of business uses is categorically forbidden, including taverns. 

Even without the basement bar, that prohibition alone would block Koch’s current setup. There is a theoretical path to repurposing the site as a country club, a use allowed in the R-2 zone under a conditional permit, with alcohol serving as a permitted accessory use only in that same conditional framework. 

Even if such a switch were permissible, Koch’s residence directly above the bar would create additional regulatory headaches. 

Anne Arundel’s zoning code forbids all home-based businesses unless expressly permitted, and a village tavern is not among the sanctioned activities. Moreover, home-based ventures cannot sell goods produced off-site. 

Thus, even a hypothetical reclassification as a country club or other allowed R-2 use would likely require Koch to relocate so the home could stop being treated as a primary residence with home-business constraints. 

While I cannot confirm the exact parking situation at Irv’s, the county requires restaurants and taverns to provide at least one space for every three seats, or one space per 200 square feet of floor area. 

That rule could force Koch to pave the front yard to create enough parking—whether or not his client base actually needs that many spots. 

Beyond parking, the county also imposes building and fire-safety standards for taverns, and Koch’s 114-year-old dwelling probably does not meet all of them. 

The sight of bras on the walls may not be welcomed by the health department, either. 

All of this helps explain why Koch’s bar stands out as the last of its kind. 

What’s striking is that, despite eight separate regulatory hurdles, the place still draws affection. In profiles, regulars sing its praises as their favorite local, and graffiti-covered walls attest to a following that travels from far and wide to stop by. 

No one seems to object to Irv’s basement bar. Even the regulators have shown unusual restraint. Its grandfathered status aside, there’s a sense that officials could find a justification to impose tighter controls if they chose. 

As things stand, no one is pushing to enforce the standard rules in a way that would erase Koch’s establishment. If that tolerance persists, one must ask why the broader application of zoning and building demands would be worth preserving for every other business in the county. 

Wouldn’t a wider degree of regulatory leeway pave the way for more innovative, unconventional businesses like Irv’s to emerge? 

San Francisco’s Vacancy Tax: A Quiet Dead Letter

Voters in San Francisco approved a special levy on unoccupied homes back in 2022, yet its rollout has been blocked by courts ever since. 

Now it appears the tax will never take effect. Earlier this month, a division of the state appeals court affirmed a lower-court decision that blocked the measure. 

The plaintiffs—property owners who argued that a tax on vacant or sporadically used properties violated multiple rights—prevail in the ruling. 

In a September decision, Justice Kathleen Banke, joined by two colleagues, concluded that the vacancy tax ran afoul of a state statute that gives landlords the right to pull their units from the rental market. 

San Francisco had argued that it was merely taxing the exercise of that right, not impeding it. 

Banke found this rationale unconvincing, writing that the city’s view reads as if a property owner can exit the rental market but has no corresponding right to stay out and be subjected to heavy taxation if they choose to re-enter. That circular reasoning reads as an unreasonable interpretation of state law. 

At present, San Francisco has not indicated whether it will appeal to the state Supreme Court. For the moment, the tax is effectively dead. 

For a more expansive treatment of the matter, see my full piece from last week. There is also a discussion of the broader phenomenon of vacant housing in pricey urban areas. 

Spain’s Housing Uprising

In less cheery news, Spain is seeing mounting protests as parliament rejected measures that would have imposed emergency rent controls and eviction protections. 

In Valencia, over the weekend, demonstrators faced dispersal with rubber projectiles and tear gas after breaching a security perimeter at a real estate conference. In Madrid and Barcelona, crowds have turned public plazas into makeshift encampments. 

The spark was the eviction of an 87-year-old retiree by the real estate firm that had bought her rent-controlled apartment and then hiked the rent dramatically. 

That eviction underscores widespread anger over rising rents and slow economic growth. 

Last week’s narrow rejection by the Spanish Parliament of emergency rent controls and eviction moratoriums proposed by the left-wing minority government only amplified street demonstrations. Those provisions have since been approved by lawmakers, and the prime minister has urged early elections. 

Do You Really Need a Shrine That Big?

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case concerning religious land use and worship rights in Kentucky, involving Catholic priests who were denied permission to construct a grotto with a Marian shrine. 

In Park Hills, zoning officials initially granted the Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist a conditional permit to build the grotto, but neighbors challenged the traffic implications of the shrine. 

A lower court sided with the neighbors and rejected the shrine, and the Kentucky Supreme Court agreed, ruling that size limits on a shrine do not constitute a substantial burden on religious practice. 

The priests appealed, arguing that the zoning limits amount to a significant restriction on their religious mission in violation of federal protection for religious land uses. 

This marks the second religious land-use dispute the high court has agreed to review in recent times. In June, the court also agreed to hear a case stemming from an Ohio city’s limits on Jewish prayer services in a private residence. 

Key Links

• Property owners suing the Rent Guidelines Board have released texts showing communications between board members and city officials during the lead-up to rent freezes. The plaintiffs argue that the supposedly independent board ignored evidence and acted for political reasons in support of the mayor’s plan to freeze rents. 
• A fresh real estate scheme has just surfaced. 

Incredible reporting from @sfchronicle’s Kate Talerico.

Supply constraints -> high median income -> for profit investors ripping off state & city with rent-raising, tax-avoiding “conversions” of market-rate into “affordable” housing.

1/3 pic.twitter.com/EE90qyJf6h

— Chris Elmendorf (@CSElmendorf) October 5, 2026

• New York City can proceed with its second home tax for now. 
• Voters in Redwood City, California, will consider a rent control ballot initiative.