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Comment by segmondy | Hacker News Reader

It's not just SV that has similiar stuff to Prop 13, most places do so. If not, the locals will simply have to pack up and move just because their property value went up which can be quite disruptive. I personally think it's fair. You shouldn't be forced to move out of a city you are rooted in where you have family and friends. Imagine getting old and deciding you wish to downsize to a smaller house because all the kids are grown. Do you want to start over in a new city when you are now replying on retirement income and are old? Of course not. That's what Prop 13 tries to stop. I don't consider it entitlement, it sucks to not be at the receiving end, but hey that's the gain for being their first.

BTW, I don't live in the Bay area and never have. I live in Detroit area and we have this same rubbish and I've had to pay 3x property tax of folks who own 5x the value of my property. It sucks but I understand.

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But this also means that without prop 13 or something like it local homeowners would have every reason to try to keep housing prices at sane levels rather than trying to get them as high as possible, would it not?

Short answer: no.

Why?

Why's that?

I'm not a fan of Prop 13 and I've considered what the effects would be if it was phased out in some way. I really wanted to gain a better understanding of the housing climate back in the 70's when this proposition came to pass. Apparently it was really, really bad. Found this NYT article from 1981 that did a pretty good job outlining what was happening[1]. I don't think we can possibly go along without it but I don't understand why Prop 13 has to be applied to businesses, landlords, and investors buying up as non-primary residences...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/17/opinion/housing-boom-goes...

What can a homeowner do to keep housing prices low? The only thing a homeowner can do is fight new development, but that isn't the only driver of cost. And depending on the area, fighting new development may not be all that effective.

Fighting new development is the cause of high housing costs in the first place, and they can stop doing that. The only possible way to solve a shortage is to add more of the things that there is a shortage of.

Having personally been a couple of city council/planning commissions meeting for a few SV cities, I can tell you the fight isn't always that effective. And the argument against aren't about money, it's about traffic, quality of life, character of the neighborhood, etc.

There are other forces at play when these decisions are made. City councils have an incentive to balance their budgets... they see commercial properties as revenue generators and residential neighborhoods as cost centers.

Look at all the commercial properties that have been built. Most of the larger ones also had substantial objections from the residential neighbors. But that didn't stop them.

Consider this: - If a city council (or whatever government body that allows/disallows development) is ultimately responsible to the voters... - If most of the (eligible) voters are the "have nots" who face scarce housing - Shouldn't this fix itself over time?

Yes, the model is more complicated that this, but I think you get the idea.

This is a long winded way of saying, it's not a case of existing homeowners vs not homeowners. There are other factors at play.

> It's not just SV that has similiar stuff to Prop 13, most places do so.

I do not know of any place that caps the property taxes of commercial or rental property.

new york used to do it but it's mostly phased out now

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