Hacker News Reader

Comment by diebeforei485 | Hacker News Reader

> We already see standard property tax forcing the elderly out of their homes in many areas.

It's reasonable to offer options to low-income retirees, for example allowing them to defer property tax payments until death. Texas does this, it works alright.

Note that a single family dewlling on .75 acres likely costs the government a lot of money to provide services (plumbing, sewer, electric etc) and is likely already a net debtor to the city/county. This style of development is why American (and Canadian) cities are going broke.

View on HN

>Note that a single family dewlling on .75 acres likely costs the government a lot of money to provide services (plumbing, sewer, electric etc) and is likely already a net debtor to the city/county. This style of development is why American (and Canadian) cities are going broke.

Maybe in a dying city nobody wants to live in anyway.

Most costs aren't spending the entire budget on plumbing/sewer/electric. All of those are often billed separately, with surcharges for infra development. RE developers are on the hook for those in new developments.

Largest costs usually are: education, police, fire, roads. Except roads, these are orthogonal to density.

So in short, your argument: people are net debtors because we have roads. Plainly false.

> RE developers are on the hook for those in new developments.

I'd suggest educating yourself on how infrastructure maintenance is actually paid for.

Here's a video to start: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

When I built my house I paid full price to have those utilities brought to my house. We’re talking over $100,000. And I continue to pay service charges for maintenance of all utilities.

Your service charges do not cover the full cost of maintenance, that's the problem.

I think that depends. Many places have private companies providing those services. The hookup costs are usually high. Then they make money on the bills too. It can be 50+ years before it needs to be replaced and another large fee charged.

Also, many places could have well and septic, so that's all private costs. Off grid solar is also being a (small) option, where allowed.

Most suburbs were built around 50 years ago, and the bills are coming due.

The claim that most American towns are going to go broke is a tricky one. The towns became dependent on federal grants raised via income taxes, the towns are not directly capable of raising income tax dollars today. It's possible that the suburban communities are financially viable with income based taxation policies rather than property tax based policies.

I think it's safe to assume that federal taxes aren't going anywhere. Likewise, I think it's very unlikely that suburban communities receive income taxing authority. Given those, I think the general prediction of American towns "going broke" in the sense of being unsustainable is true.

Most suburban/exurban SFH in most regions of the US have their own wells, septic, and plumbing. They're not on city water.

Most suburban SFH is on well water and septic? I really doubt that. Exurban maybe, rural sure.

Yeah, suburbs are developed and on city water. Only in suburbs of rural areas do you find developments where everyone's on septic - the minimum here is 5 acres if you have a septic system, so every development with lots smaller than that is at least on shared septic (at what point shared septic becomes a sewer system is up for debate).

Amusingly enough I knew a guy who lived in a suburb of a major CA city, but since his house had been built when it was rural, he was unknowingly on a septic system even though everyone else on his block was on city sewer.

What are you talking about? The city/county charges for those services - us municipalities are going broke for two simple reasons 1) public pensions 2) mismanagement

They don't charge you the full cost of providing those services.

There is a whole playlist about this: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0

I would call that mismanagement, no?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com