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Comment by thorwasdfasdf | Hacker News Reader

With re-zoning this won't be a problem. Just rezone it to residential. or residential/commercial.

There's nothing Mountain View wants to do less than let anyone live there.

Also, because of Prop 13 those people wouldn't be paying property tax in 10 years, much like how everyone living there now isn't paying any, so Google is paying for everyone's schools and sewer systems as is.

> because of Prop 13 those people wouldn't be paying property tax in 10 years

I'm not sure what you mean. Prop 13 just caps the annual increase at 2%. I've lived in California and owned property here for 30 years. I pay property taxes.

If the annual increase is capped at 2% and inflation is >2% then the value reaped by property tax will eventually go to 0.

Similar to how if you rent the same place for long enough and it's rent controlled your rent effectively gets cheaper even though it's going up.

and if inflation is under 2% and the city always increases by the maximum of 2%, then eventually the value of the property tax paid will be infinite, right? How is that analysis useful?

If you make property tax a fixed percentage of the value of the property, it automatically adjusts with inflation.

Can't they game their way around that though by just increasing the assessed the value of the property? That's how my town effectively raises property taxes beyond the statutory limits. Sure you can appeal the assessed valuation but most people don't. It is expensive and time-consuming.

It’s fixed at the original assessment the last time it was sold, I think. It also applies to businesses, with the result that the car dealership next to me pays less taxes than a new condo. Inheritance does not reset it, meaning the state is effectively living under feudalism.

There was an attempt to fix this for businesses just last year, but it failed because homeowners were convinced it was a plot to get them.

No, it's fixed at when the house was built. You'll see "renovations" where the entire house minus one wall is demolished, and the new structure built around it. This allows the owners to avoid reassessment.

> If the annual increase is capped at 2% and inflation is >2% then the value reaped by property tax will eventually go to 0.

Asymptotically at infinity, you're not wrong.

I'm probably not living that long though. Meanwhile taxes do go up every year in real money.

Taxes go up in nominal money :)

Imagine how much nicer the cities of the world would become with many of the offices turned into residential. There would be a rebirth of local community.

With many of those offices gone, many people simply won't live in those cities. There seems to be an assumption here that people want to live in cities, but that's certainly not true across the board.

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