Mountain View moves forward with 9,100-unit housing option next to Google

2. Assuming she is living almost alone she probably doesn't want a [big] house and could move into a smaller unit nearby (and have some money left over)

3. But, there probably are not any smaller units since zoning effectively blocked them being built.

This way a retired person never has to move because of an increase in the value of their property making the taxes unaffordable. But if and when it's sold, and they actually realize that gain from the property's value, at that point they do have to pay the taxes. Proposition 13 instead lets them have their cake and eat it too: they pay property taxes as if there were no value increase, but then can sell the property and get a big windfall.

I'm not sure I believe that.

As I understand it, Prop 13 caps property tax increases on a given property to a maximum ~2% per year. [0] Your property's value is not reassessed, no matter what happens to other properties in the area! The only way for a property to be reassessed (and -thus- for its tax to dramatically increase-) is for it to change hands, or for major improvements to be performed to the property.

Even in the case of major improvements, the value of just the improvement is assessed and added to the value of the property as a whole. The unimproved portion of the property is not reassessed.

Am I dramatically misunderstanding something about Prop 13?

Or were you saying "The cost of living at this mom's place is now so high that she can't even afford to pay the Prop 13-suppressed property tax on her property."?

[0] Inflation is generally understood to be ~3% per year, and has been for at least a decade... so this means that property taxes increase at a rate that is lower than inflation.

So, when you choose a place to live, you know that you can plan your life there. Also, you don't need to be scared for the landlord blackmailing you.

I guess that both systems work. It's just different models of society.

That's still pretty bad, and I know several people myself who were forced out due to rising rents becoming unaffordable.

That kind of disruption to people's lives doesn't make the kind of society I want to live in.

I also urge you to read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10551005 .

3. The notion of costs outstripping rent growth in the Bay Area is so far from reality as to constitute trolling. Owning real estate there is like a license to print money.

Oh my no. Not in San Francisco or the SFBA.

God no.

Five years ago, the place I'm living in rented for ~$1,500/month. Now? It's north of $3,000. Now, either materials costs and wages have not DOUBLED over the last five years, or I am in ABSOLUTELY the wrong line of work, and need to get me a piece of that delicious building-maintenance-and-management pie before it runs out!

Additionally: In California, Prop 13 caps property tax increases to a maximum of ~2% per year. Coincidentally, the San Francisco Rent Stabilization rent increase cap works out to be ~2% per year. SF also lets a landlord pass through all sorts of expenses and rate increases directly to their tenants.

Moreover: The landlord knew the score when they became a landlord. In SF, Rent Stabilization was enacted around late 1970. It only applies to buildings built before late 1970. So, if you decide to rent a building, you ALREADY know whether or not you'll be subject to Rent Stabilization, or if you'll be able to rent at "market rate". It's not like this shit is a surprise in most districts! :)

Mandating some percent of units be "affordable" or charging various taxes which go towards building affordable is not unprecedented. But those strategies succeeding might be. ;)

The average owner of a single-family home can't afford to demolish it and build a new block of flats. All this would accomplish is to make it financially feasible to buy up single-family homes and build more luxury units in them, concentrating even more wealth in the hands of property developers.

This is basically exactly what's happening in Vancouver; build a condo tower that starts at $1m/unit, it gets bought by either the rich elite or property speculators (or individuals attempting to 'hide' their wealth in other countries), and then sits idle. Even with rent control, new housing being built is predominantly geared towards the upper class, or the top end of the upper middle class. Property values go up, and the only thing keeping rents even remotely reasonable is the rent controls.

Then, because rent is controlled, property values are kept lower than they would otherwise be, because the 'buy-and-rent' landlords can't pay for a mortgage that costs less than market rates for rent, so fewer landlord tycoons buy as many units. This means lower mortgages and more supply for people who actually want to purchase a home and have actual security.

Your proposal would still concentrate power in the hands of developers and landlords; developers would buy up all the houses that would sell, knock them down to build rental units, and then, if rents risked dropping 'too low', they'd stop building for a while and just hold on to the properties.

I agree, which is why I singled out poor arguments in my comment.

Looking for headquarters is meaningful if we're trying to make a comparison between Mountain View and Loudoun County. Google is headquartered in Mountain View. Loudoun has no real equivalent for HQs or even large offices for global companies. The startup scene is pretty dry too.

Apart from voting a board that wants to increase housing there's almost no comparison. If you want to use Dulles and Loudoun as an example you should use it to illustrate that you can't slap in a bunch of housing units without thinking about infrastructure.