Comment by sbuttgereit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sbuttgereit | Hacker News Reader

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Yes. We should absolutely not allow people to own homes in neighborhoods where they simply can't keep up with the financial realities of the neighborhood. Especially, the older people that maybe once were highly productive but, now, might not be able to as rapidly advance in wages or, God forbid, may even be retired and now on a fixed income; the nerve of those people to think that somehow property ownership entitles them to live in their homes for as long as they want. The community has needs and, as the old saying goes, "on ne saurait faire d'omelette sans casser des œufs"! Imagine how much faster re-gentrification and local government growth could be if you could push the churn of homes up? Clear out the dead-weight I say.

Now admittedly, I'm being somewhat of a hypocrite here. I am best described as a marginal homeowner in beautiful San Francisco. I bought a home in a somewhat so-so part of town that was surprisingly affordable, relative speaking, for what we got. And we could afford it, we measured where we were looking, and balanced our expenses including taxes, and made good decisions. But that was more than a decade ago and times have changed over the past few years. Our little neighborhood is on an uptick and getting much more expensive. While that has brought some advantages (lower crime, better shopping)... it means if I were to try and buy my home at today's market rates, I simply couldn't do it. And if the taxes on my place had kept up "with inflation" in local home prices, I'd have to sell. Sure, I'd have a handsome capital gain... much of which I would also have to pay in taxes (the community has needs after all), before having to likely move out of the Bay Area, but... progress. I'm also older... damn near 50! Which means I'm not at the bottom of my earning potential, but at the top.

So I'm with you. It's completely unfair that those newcomers should come here and bear the brunt of higher taxes, of course, they should also not think that they can count on stability in tax rates. The community has needs, and you know, progress.

Great points. It's impossible to know what would happen to the prices in your neighborhood under different conditions. But prices /probably/ wouldn't rise as much if people were forced to sell their homes due to increasing tax burdens.

1) Home owners would new favor development to keep supply high, prices stable, and taxes stable. Who wants to pay more taxes for the same thing? No one. With Prop 13, you get that guaranteed. But everyone else gets fucked. As far as your concerned, who cares?

2) Even though prices would still inevitably rise, it would force those that can't keep up with the increasing taxes to sell, increasing supply and holding down prices.

First, in both of your points someone gets fucked. As far as you're concerned, who cares, so long as it's the right group getting fucked. Perhaps the real discussion is on why you chose to favor one group (new property owners) at the expense of the other (incumbent property owners).

Second, you're conflating issues. Being in favor of Prop 13 is not the same as being against new development. These issues are not the same. Truth is, my neighborhood is one of the few seeing a lot of new development... it's one of the green areas on the map and pretty much all of this development is multi-story/high density housing. I don't necessarily oppose this (I would if it were due to government community redevelopment efforts, special handouts, etc). There would probably be more development if the city was managed more like I would like to see it managed. I am absolutely against the vast majority of regulatory constraint on new development.

> First, in both of your points someone gets fucked. As far as you're concerned, who cares, so long as it's the right group getting fucked. Perhaps the real discussion is on why you chose to favor one group (new property owners) at the expense of the other (incumbent property owners).

This is a disingenuous characterization of the problem at hand. Its not a question of newcomers getting your single family home from you, its of you selling your home which will likely be redeveloped into higher density housing for a lot more people. And you wouldn't be "fucked": yes you would lose your beautiful single family residence, but more people would be able to afford living in the community in which they are a part of, but can't because of how expensive housing is.

On the contrary, by denying newcomers any housing near their workplace, you are fucking up their quality of life immensely: they cannot build equity (prices too high), are forced to commute long distances or are simply excluded from the community because of artificially high home prices, have to pay much more in taxes for services that you use. That is massively fucking a lot of people.

This isn't rocket science; it happens all the time in all major cities. Low density gets redeveloped because of changing economic and social conditions. Its how cities evolve. Prop 13 is basically stifling the growth and natural evolution of major cities in all of California, but especially SF.

You have to remember, though, that Proposition 13 has overt racism as part of its history; people like to go on about "tax revolts" and citizens reacting against over-taxation, but it was pushed as a centerpiece of reactionary measures after California's courts refused to allow various attempts at maintaining indirect racial segregation of schools, and ordered redistribution of funding between school districts. Proposition 13, by gutting the property tax (which was the primary source of school funding), was the final end-run around courts which increasingly would not allow vastly unequal schools for children of different races.

Today, there's no good argument for it. "I moved here a few years earlier than you did" is not a sound basis for different levels of taxation. If you want to protect elderly owner-occupiers from being priced out of their long-time homes, you can accomplish that goal with other measures.

The original minimum wage laws were born of overt racism. I assume you don't mean to dismantle them with this line of argumentation? Or do you?

So far, I have heard that Prop 13 was really about landlords and corporations (different comment in this thread) and now it's about racism. In my neighborhood, disproportionately long term minorities would be effected more under your proposal of dismantling Prop 13 and landlords and corporations don't rent out of charity... they'd raise rents to cover taxes so ultimately renters cover that cost anyway. I wonder what other boogeymen and tropes we're going to trot out to rationalize opposition to Prop 13 rather than get to the heart of the matter.

It's very easy to speak out against something and to rally both emotion and self-righteous indignation against someone you oppose... but much harder to convince someone that what you stand for is right.

Tell you what; I'll join you in the cry to demolish Prop 13... but only is so far as it means paying for the infrastructural costs that a property tax might be construed to be proper to fund. So we take the operating costs of fire, police, sewer, water, roads... you get the gist, for the year passed and only their existing programs, add an amount the equal to the annual rate of inflation, and the charge me for the coming year my pro rata share of those costs on a square footage basis... which is more reflective of what my household consumes than its market value, arguably you could also put a head count in there, too. If you wanted to expand essential services, do that via automatic existing program expansion/retraction based on changes in population or a vote of the property owners that fund them. If you want to include renters in that vote, fine, but then measures like rent control or other protection of those renters from the financial reality they vote on the property owners is out: no skin in the game, no voice.

No? Then tell us really why you want this and really what you stand for.

No? Then tell us really why you want this and really what you stand for.

So if I'm against Proposition 13 I must have some sinister motive I'm unwilling to admit to?

I've stated clearly that if your goal is to protect elderly owner-occupiers, there are plenty of ways to do it that aren't Proposition 13.

And your proposal is basically the "last year's budget locks in next year's" model that's known to cause all sorts of perverse incentives in organizations that use it, both in the public and the private sector. So that doesn't really seem like a good fit. Plus, it feels motivated by the sort of "I want the services but don't want to pay taxes to get them" mentality that so often causes trouble.

And seeing as how increased overhead (in the form of taxes) gets passed on to renters, your assertion that renters don't have "skin in the game" is factually false.

Do you actually have anything to offer? Perhaps you should tell us what you really stand for, hm?

Prop 13 wasn't about the elderly or retired, and there are many tax abatement programs in other states (like homestead exemptions) that benefit them.

Prop 13 benefits landlords and corporations, it was a hand out to business interests wrapped up in a feel-good message about the elderly.

This is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy. When you protect fixed income / elderly via rent control and prop 13 (aka rent control for home owners), you reduce the incentive to trade and build housing. Which means price go up, and now you really need those or the people you purported to protect will be destroyed by a Sword of Damocles of your own construction.

> And if the taxes on my place had kept up "with inflation" in local home prices, I'd have to sell.

The alternative framing of the issue yields less sympathy: "My home is worth so much now that I had to pay the new occupant tax rate, I'd be forced to sell it for an absurd amount of money."

Theoretically, if it came to the point where folks consider leaving town, they'd at least vote for pro-build politicians to alleviate rents / home appreciation.

Of course, as a high income renter, I obviously prefer a 'build your way out.' And as a new construction apartment unit occupant, it's not myself I'm volunteering to evict to upzone.

>We should absolutely not allow people to own homes in neighborhoods where they simply can't keep up with the financial realities of the neighborhood.

It should be fair to everyone and not discriminate. So make the tax rate equal for the person who has been there and the person who just bought a house. Otherwise you are making it harder for one of those groups to be able to own a home in that neighborhood for the sake of making it easier for the other group, in which case your sarcastic quip applies back to you.

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