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Comment by 0xffff2 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, "in most cases" was my hedge around the various ways in which property can be transferred while keeping its tax status. The majority of prop 13 is insane IMO. If I had to pick a single thing to change, I'd much rather stop applying it to commercial property than remove the inheritance provision.

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Yeah, commercial property makes no sense either, especially if you consider the original intent of the law, but it bothers me less than residences as at least those properties, in theory, are doing something productive for society.

Long-term residents are also doing something productive for society -- they are providing stable communities around which longer-term plans can be made, in which cultural memory of e.g. local climatological risks can be preserved, etc. Housing is definitely way too expensive in the bay area, but calling existing residents "unproductive" is pretty astonishingly, callously, selfishly offensive.

Residences, not residents. Buildings, not people.

Eh, I'd say I've met quite a lot of long-term residents of San Francisco. Pretty much no correlation between ownership and how worthless that person is to the community. I know renters with their 30-year lease that don't even live here anymore. I know homeowners with their 30-year old property tax assessment that also don't even live here anymore.

Both just pop in every now and then to enjoy the Bay Area for cheap and then let the home sit vacant the other 300+ days of the year.

I also know renters and owners that have been very active in their local communities.

If the metric you care about is "societal productivity" there are better ways to measure and reward that than based on "how long have you owned here."

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