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Comment by rm_-rf_slash | Hacker News Reader

Low-rise San Francisco is very pleasant, probably the most pleasant place I could imagine living. It's quite walkable and quiet in the right places. And in a place like that you can know your neighbors. Ironically, people live more segmented lives the higher buildings get.

I also understand why people would want to maintain the quality of life they had when they purchased their house, even if it is at the expense of community at large. As such, there should be a significant property tax to compensate for comfort when housing costs are so high.

Then again, the city and state have bizarre tax laws for property so I could be suggesting a political impossibility for all I know.

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Unfortunately, property tax law in California does the exact opposite. The tax can't be higher than 1% of the assessed value of the house, and that assessment can't go up by more than 2% every year as long as the house isn't sold. So the people who have been living in the neighborhood the longest and complain the most about "neighborhood character" also pay much less property tax than their neighbors. And by "much less" I mean 10-20 times less in some cases, given how much property values have gone up over the past 40 or so years.

The tax rate can also be passed down to your heirs upon your death. It also covers commercial buildings. What was originally sold as "don't tax grandma out" is obviously a power move to create a land holding elite.

I'm a property owner, but I don't really like the system. I also don't like how mismanaged the property taxes here are, but that's another thread.

Can't agree more. The laws made in late 70s were made to benefit a specific class of people, and they are most vocal against any change which is aimed to bring equality.

"The tax rate can also be passed down to your heirs upon your death."

So can rent-controlled rents, believe it or not.

Not quite. There are "parcel taxes" too that keep going up.

And 2%/year increase isn't inconsequential.

Parcel tax increases are voted on so they aren't just random increases. And I think they need 2/3 to pass.

But parcel taxes are added by popular vote of city/district residents, so they almost always pass.

2%/year is pretty inconsequential.

Consider that the average inflation rate is 3-4%/year[1][2], and houses generally tend to increase in value at roughly the same rate as inflation[3]. Thus, your property taxes are expected to get cheaper in real cost every year, assuming the housing market is relatively stable.

Of course, in SV, the situation is much much worse than this, because housing prices have grown much faster than inflation due to the booming economy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Measures [2] http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Long_Term_... [3] http://observationsandnotes.blogspot.ca/2011/07/housing-pric...

I've known maybe 20% of my neighbors in SF,and I didn't live in high rises. I've lived in the low density housing you speak of. Sunset, Tenderloin, Nob Hill, and Russian Hill. People in the Sunset live very insular lives. Maybe it has to do with the immigrant nature of it, or maybe because some places are brothels or grow houses. Tenderloin had a better sense of community, and it's probably the highest density of all four places.

I'm sure this is totally different for various different people and different blocks, but over the course of 10 years living in 4 neighborhoods in SF (Soma, Mission, Inner Sunset, Inner Richmond) I never knew more than one neighbor along each street. I moved to Oakland 3 months ago to a very communal street and already know every person along our approx 25 house block. The lack of neighbor contact always seemed pretty ingrained in SF culture for whatever reason.

There's a really interesting book called [A Pattern Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language) that goes into this.

They attribute tall buildings with insanity, as denizens begin losing scope of their world simply by virtue of not being able to see beyond buildings.

Another thing to note is that "Centers of Culture" are beginning to become more amorphous, as tech gentrification is whitewashing a lot of what gave San Francisco its identity. The Mission is probably the most glaring example of transformation, for better or worse.

Most of SF is not low-rise buildings, but 1–2 story single family houses.

Re-zoning SF to allow low-rise buildings throughout could increase density by something like 3–5x.

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