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Comment by crdoconnor | Hacker News Reader

If I had a $2 million mortgage in SF I'd probably be a NIMBY too. Pretty much anything that increases supply of housing could wipe a million off my net worth.

Low property taxes and Howard Jarvis's "taxpayer foundation" are the ultimate villains here by fighting to create this exact situation.

The people who are fighting to escape being in $1 mil negative equity by going to town halls and kicking up a fuss arent necessarily deserving but they're simply reacting to incentives put in place by others.

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The low property tax thing is another favorite of the tech industry to target, to deflect blame from the elephant in the room (massive insatiable demand). There is a lot of validity here: there are cases where rich property owners are not paying their fair share in taxes. But it’s often a disingenuous argument meant just to deflect responsibility.

The property tax rules were originally passed to protect senior citizens from losing their homes because they couldn’t afford to pay surging tax rates. A boom happens, their house values go up, but they’re still living in fixed incomes.

I literally just read a Twitter exec, on Twitter, openly say that well seniors could just sell their homes. Nice! Great solution. Just leave, old people!

Or, they could just do a reverse mortgage. Sweet. Those are totally unproblematic for seniors, right?!

I just watched Hell or High Water which is about two guys that become bank robbers because their mom was going to lose their home to a reverse mortgage.

Or seniors could be allowed to defer their property taxes and convert them into a tax lien on their property, to be dealt with by the estate. You know, a simple and obvious solution. But of course, the two guys in Hell or High Water would still ultimately be SOL. That's what privilege (owning a house sitting on highly-desirable land that's probably worth millions of dollars) looks like in real life. Privilege and greed.

Did you see the movie? It was a poor family that put all their money into a house, then lost it through a reverse mortgage. “Privilege and greed” is a slapdash accusation here.

Some families struggle to put their life savings into a home and don’t have anything left over for other investments. What you’re proposing is still going to place pressure on seniors to move lest they lose a lot of estate value.

Basically I think you’ll find support for doing this go to rich who can afford it. But a blanket shift to liens on cash-poor seniors’ homes could end up disproportionately hurting the less fortunate.

How about we change state property tax law so that anyone can automatically get their property taxes converted to liens? With penalties for people who can afford to pay, and no penalties for those who cannot. Coupled with basing taxes on something like actual market value, obviously.

Then absolutely nobody will ever be thrown out of their home because of owing taxes, and there's still enough property tax income to pay for services. Everybody wins and grandma with the multi-million-dollar ancestral pile in SF can stay!

I'm honestly not seeing any significant downside to an approach like this. Do you?

> openly say that well seniors could just sell their homes. Nice! Great solution. Just leave, old people!

Or...sell to a condo complex developer, get some cash + a unit in the new building + housing while it's being built. Win-win. An condo unit is less maintenance to deal with, which is a plus for a senior. They also get to unlock some of the value of their property, and turn it into cash they can use now, without having to move away from their existing networks of friends and family.

I agree this can be a good outcome, but there’s a big difference between forcing seniors to do this versus letting them opt into it. Especially when hiking taxes does not guarantee that the “magic of the market” will provide a good solution in each case. There is a lot of intangible value built up in a home you’ve lived in for decades with the goal of retiring in it.

"intangible value" is the type of thing I'm less sympathetic to. People are living on the streets because they can't afford housing, because there isn't enough being built. Emotional attachments to a piece of property are not more important than solving the human misery caused by the current state of affairs.

It's not just emotional attachment. There's a lot of investment that goes into building community relationships and the living space itself that doesn't translate into market value.

> People are living on the streets because they can't afford housing, because there isn't enough being built.

So you're making an ethical appeal that old people should be forced to sell their homes to solve homelessness. Ok, I'll take you up on that.

You've only cited the supply side of the problem. You could just as well say "People are living on the streets because they can't afford housing, because too many techies are moving into town. Young people living in a fun adult playground is not more important than solving human misery cause by the current state of affairs."

Now which is more important: helping wealthier people live in a funner city or keeping seniors in their homes? What's the first priority here?

> There's a lot of investment that goes into building community relationships and the living space itself that doesn't translate into market value.

My proposed solution preserves community relationships.

> So you're making an ethical appeal that old people should be forced to sell their homes to solve homelessness

Nope. I'm arguing that people shouldn't be able to use zoning to wield power over other people's property to the unreasonable extent we're seeing now. That they can do so is a result of laws like Prop 13 - there's no personal cost to being anti-development.

> People are living on the streets because they can't afford housing, because too many techies are moving into town

You're literally arguing that no city should ever increase in population - it should stay frozen forever because god forbid, otherwise the neighborhood might change.

> Young people living in a fun adult playground

What does that have to do with higher rent and property prices? Or anything else?

> Now which is more important: helping wealthier people live in a funner city or keeping seniors in their homes? What's the first priority here?

You can do both and have no homelessness. Oppressive zoning laws prevent it.

"The property tax rules were originally passed to protect senior citizens from losing their homes"

FWIW that was the sales pitch not the reason. The same people who got prop 13 passed on that basis also demonstrate their concern for the elderly by lobbying to slash public pensions in California:

https://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/public-pensions-c...

"A boom happens, their house values go up, but they’re still living in fixed incomes. I literally just read a Twitter exec, on Twitter, openly say that well seniors could just sell their homes. Nice! Great solution. Just leave, old people!"

The additional free money capital gains ought to take the sting out of having to move. Renting pensioners don't get that. They also don't get 1%'er lobbies pretending to care about them.

Prop 13 was passed in 1978. That post on pensions is from 2010. You’re going to need a stronger connection than that to support the charge that helping seniors stay housed is made up.

> The additional free money capital gains ought to take the sting out of having to move.

Well, there you go. Openly arguing for forcing grandparents out of the homes they’ve lived in for decades. This is an amazingly callous line of argument to me.

  The additional free money capital gains

... face the full regular income tax rate in CA income taxes.

I can't believe you're actually arguing that prop 13 was for the seniors so they could afford their houses and that it wasn't a massive fucking cash grab by realtors in california. This makes me think you're entire line of arguing here is disingenuous.

Housing prices don’t necessarily go down if a place increases in density. It depends on the location. Take a look at 5th ave in Manhattan - as large single family homes were being replaced by skyscrapers, the value of land went up.

But who's buying? If nobody is buying cause the cost is too high, your asset is illiquid and functionally worthless.

Exactly. I just don't get the logic behind wanting to drive up the entire market beyond the reach of most buyers. I'm guessing most folks just don't sell precisely because of this and instead opt to rent out instead.

This is probably fine except when they actually need to sell the house for whatever reason.

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