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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

If you own a place you don't need to "keep paying an increasing rent".

Gentrification effects an upward pressure on property values. Property values determine property tax. You're right, that's not technically rent, but it is one of the predominant mechanisms by which people are priced out of neighborhoods.

It would really suck to engage in real estate speculation and then have the value of my investment skyrocket until I sell it for a large sum of money. I sure hope that doesn't happen to me one day!

Buying low and selling high, how awful.

Low income households spend an exceptionally high percentage of their income on housing (http://www.lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/hou...). Meaning they are particularly sensitive to price increases. So yes, it would really suck for your home value to increase a couple percent and have to move. But hey, if there's profit involved who can complain!

Furthermore, most low income households who own property aren't engaging in speculation, they are simply trying to keep the property they inherited.

Many(most?) localities have a cap on property taxes for this very reason. For instance, look at the propery taxes for 3 or 4 million dollar brownstones in Brooklyn; it's usually 5 or 6 thousand per year.

Most younger people can't afford to own, often because housing has been made artificially scarce and artificially expensive to artificially enrich the class of older people who bought when it was cheap.

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