Who could have guessed, policy makers that serve the hand that feeds them?
Those governments, by design, serve the interests of their local citizens. That is, the population they serve is inherently skewed toward existing property owners. You can't fix this by complaining about money in politics or whatever, that's not why it's happening.
The solution has to be at the broader government level (i.e. in Sacramento in this case), wrenching back some of the control that has traditionally been local in the interests of the broader population and not just, say, Palo Alto residents.
It should also include at least a selective repeal of proposition 13 for non-occupant residences and a re-assessment of all such residences to tax those who are using our real estate as a financial instrument rather than a place to live.
I'd also be in favor of an extra tax on out-of-state residences held by non-occupants and on out-of-state non-occupant purchases.
Of course, about 80 to 90% of the existing homeowners (in many neighborhoods most people bought they're homes more than 20 years ago, you can verify this for yourself on zillow) won't like that, as they're currently paying about 0.1 to 0.05%! So, it's a pretty hard sell.
I'm much more in favor of incentivizing people to support positive change than just bringing out the big sticks. How about giving everyone in the neighboorhood a property tax credit if they vote to upzone? Or giving companies big tax breaks if they allow 50% of their workforce to work remotely (tackling both housing and transportation issues)?
There is an idea of excluding commercial properties from Prop 13 too (I think they shouldn't have to be covered to begin with, the whole idea of prop 13 was to "keep that old lady in her house when she has retired and cannot keep up with raising expenses").
Also props 58 and 193 allow to inherit Prop 13 tax assessment by children and grandchildren (again against original idea of prop 13 to just help elderly with living in their places when retired) so Prop 13 expanded that way to became multi-generational.
We can consider excluding non-primary residences from it too.
But if that isn't the case, then wouldn't a home have to be sold to cover the tax increase? So you couldn't keep a home in the family, either.
Also why new homeowners not inheriting it are supposed to be paying property taxes in full?
this would mean proposing that the law that's supposedly meant to help old people would actually be limited to those old people
I pay more than 4x what my parents will ever pay in property taxes on their home that is worth more than 4x what mine is.
Prop 13 was, pardon my french, such a dumb fucking proposition.
This accomplishes the original goal of the initiative — to keep fixed-income seniors in their homes — without starving localities of property tax money and disincentivizing them from allowing new housing to be built.
Politically, passing these changes would still be hellishly difficult, particularly the second one, which is not so easy to understand. One way of putting the problem is that Prop. 13 represents a massive transfer of wealth from future California residents to present ones. Of course, the future ones can't vote against it since they don't live here yet.
You'd get a lot less resistance there. You're not messing with cost of living for owner occupied homes, just second properties, investment properties, and of course all those foreign cash buyers using our real estate as a money laundering vehicle.
It's still my understanding that landlords of multiple units who have tenants in rent control would have a massive problem with the repeal of Prop 13. It's one of the things that go hand in hand with rent control and keep costs low. They would have a strong argument for being unable to maintain their buildings and run a business without Prop 13.
Prop 13 doesn't keep total costs low for landlords, it just shifts costs from property taxes to other things.
They are leasing you your place at market rate. The market rate is affected by supply / demand of rental units, not landlord costs. The only way they could pass the extra tax onto you is if you are not market rate and there is a law that allows them to do this, or if increasing property taxes on apartment buildings decreases the supply of rental units - an unlikely scenario.
Not sure what you mean by this: my landlord can raise my rent for whatever reason (or no reason), by any amount they desire.
I can choose whether or not I want to pay it, of course. But I imagine moderate increases to cover at least some (and maybe all?) of the cost of a property tax increase would be swallowed by most renters, given that moving is also a cost, and often a large one.
In fact, we have empirical evidence for this. The campaign for Prop. 13 claimed that landlords would pass on the savings, but after it was passed, no corresponding drop in rents was observed.
The question, though, is the magnitude of this effect compared to the other forces acting on supply. I think it's small. The value appreciation being enjoyed by rental property owners greatly outweighs the small increase in property taxes they would pay without Prop. 13.
Non-residents cannot hold governments accountable (by voting) for how they use the money which allows the towns to side step one of the core principals of democracy (not to mention that non residents don't have as good information on which to evaluate the performance of local government since many local issues will not affect non-residents). I would have no problem taxing people who enable this by having income or vacation properties in towns they don't live and taxing local property owners who vote for the people who do it.
It is unfortunate that the most disenfranchised demographics are the ones least likely to vote/organize.
Of course this assumes renters actually vote. As noted before, most do not. Thus the tyranny of the minority situation.
Lots of people want to live in Cambridge, MA. Cambridge is lovely, walkable, and bursting with jobs. But not everyone who wants to can live in Cambridge, because Cambridge has large areas of inappropriately low density that homeowners fight to preserve.
Many people who work in Cambridge live in Everett. Everett is kinda shitty. It doesn't even have good transit to and from Cambridge.
People who live in Everett and want to live in Cambridge can't vote on Cambridge housing policy. They can only vote in Everett.
Local control of zoning sounds so democratic, but it's a tool of rent-seeking, exclusion, and discrimination.
This assumes that the claim that 63% of SF is renters is correct. I don't know the truth of that.
If even a quarter of those people are immigrants, that tips the scales quite a bit.
The current hole was dug by local governments being very involved in telling property owners what they could and couldn't do over many decades.
Why will recursion fix the problem?
The bay area is rich enough and enough of that is tied up in property that if it perceives it needs to buy influence in government in order to keep it's wealth it will probably be able to do so then the problem will be even more entrenched because it will be entrenched at the state level.
The Law: https://therealdeal.com/la/2017/10/05/will-new-california-la...
The Effect: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/02/community-reacts-to-d...
More like, California and Federal level policymakers have been too lenient and let town and city level politicians make too much selfish policy that hurts the state and country level economy and progress.
The economic powerhouse areas don't belong only to their current residents. Everyone in the country has a right to strive for wealth and a better life by moving to economically active regions. We shouldn't create a society where your economic class is determined by where you happened to be born.
Its wretched, but that is the society we live in today! Why haven't you picked yourself up by your bootstraps yet? /s