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> Who will deliver us from this meddlesome law?

Only voters can. Directly. At the ballot box.

So don’t hold your breath. Any other remedy wouldn’t really be legal nor legitimate because of the nature of ballot initiatives, particularly ones that amend the State constitution.

Proposition 13 is sitting on top of a long pile of ballot-passed laws that have over time convinced me the entire ballot initiative process is actually a mistake and primarily enables bad but popular laws.

> the entire ballot initiative process is actually a mistake

It is also arguably un-American. I thought the whole idea of having a representative government was so the common citizen didn't have to deal with the tedium of actually governing, so we elect people to govern in our stead. The fact the us Californians were expected to have opinions on props related to dialysis clinics in 2018[1], 2020[2], and 2022[3] should be a prime example of this. I have no idea what those props were supposed to do. All I know is the only reason I am being asked to weigh in on them is because someone with money was finding it too hard to pass whatever law they wanted through the legislature, so they tried to circumvent the normal legislative process by coming to us directly.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_Proposition_8

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_23

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_California_Proposition_29

As a resident of a nearby state whose real estate market keeps rising because of the steady flow of people forced to leave California because they can't afford it, my favorite of the dumb propositions that is destroying California is Prop 103. Among other complicated things it specifically enumerates what tools homeowner (and auto) insurance companies can use to set rates (global climate catastrophe models? Not a thing when they voted in 1988, so now they can never be used). It also created the Consumer Intervenor process so it takes about two years for a rate hike to be approved, and companies have to prove that they are only using the approved methods and nothing else. This is the reason the California homeowner's insurance market is in grave danger: the company runs the "real" model which tells how much they will pay out in damages over the course the rate period, then they have to figure out a way to justify it to the (as a result of the prop, now elected) California Insurance Commissioner in the face of the Consumer Intervenors (who get their costs, expenses, and attorney fees covered out of the company pocket if they win and the rates aren't approved). If the company doesn't think the lines cross, then they don't offer insurance and start to withdraw from the market. This is why California's homeowners insurance market is so dysfunctional, because of a proposition that passed 35 years ago with 51% of the ballot but now effectively cannot be changed or amended.

Of course, to vote on this, you have to live in the state, and doing that is tough because housing is expensive, because NIMBY homeowners made it illegal to build new homes, because they don't experience the pain of rising property prices in their taxes, because of prop 13.

There are around 40 million people in California. What's hard is that a fair solution to Prop 13 is difficult. You can't just shut it off suddenly or even gradually over a decade because people will lose their homes en masse and property values and current mortgage rates combined make it very difficult to move, and just about impossible for the seniors who Prop 13 was supposed to help. You have to carve a solution very carefully not to screw over a large segment of voters.

Or all the renters can get together and decide to screw over the owners; fuck 'em 'cause they're old anyway. That's certainly a possibility. However, expect your children to treat you the same way.

> You can't just shut it off suddenly

Everyone who says this is pushing a false dichotomy. The two solutions are not "create a landed gentry who pass preferential tax rates to their genetic offspring" and "kick grandma to the curb and throw sand in her face while twirling your mustache".

Many other states have allowances/exemptions for a single owner-occupied "homestead" to prevent older people from losing their homes. Just copy their homework. Under those schemes you don't stop owing property taxes, but (with some variations) you can defer them until you sell the property or pass away. And it is beyond sick (and anti-American and probably unconstitutional) that the Prop 13 tax preference can be inherited by children and grandchildren.

The only "problem" with those schemes (from the perspective of Prop 13 proponents) is that they do not allow the creation of a class of "petite nobility".

Inheriting the tax has been phased out, unless you make the house your primary residence (which of course many people might choose to do, but it still is stricter than it was until recently).

As long as you make the house your primary residence for like 2 years and then you're free to rent it out with your super low tax rate

I thought you lost it once it ceased to be your primary residence for people who interrupt e after 2023? As dumb as prop thirteen is I'm curious since I may wind up in this situation

I don't know. Every grandma who got an education in the 70s is doing extremely well right now, much better than lotterying into a house that cost $15,000 and is now worth $1.5m. If you got an education as a doctor, you got a lot more money than that $1.5m (and then, when you sell, you still need a house, and prices have risen everywhere you want to live), but more importantly, you were educated!

I feel for the grandmas who want to live in the same place forever and also did not get educations so were left behind. It was a complicated time. Everyone deserves a community, but maybe not the same community.

> "petite nobility"

The guilded professionals are the petite nobility. The parents of the students in these articles: like, they had a choice. They could fund their schools better and they chose not to. And given that same choice, those same students, they are now adults, and again, they choose not to. Which community do you want to be a part of?

Didn’t California already have a homestead exemption and a senior exemption?

https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/homeowners_exemption.htm

https://www.boe.ca.gov/news/2021/NR-21-02.htm

if someone is underutilizing an asset like land, to the point that they wouldn't be able to flow enough cash to pay fairly assessed taxes on it, maybe there should be an incentive to sell, rent out, or refinance the property. Lot of empty nesters knocking around 4br homes in the Bay, maybe it's ok to stop subsidizing them. If all else fails, they're sitting on a million+ dollar asset that should keep them living quite well for the rest of their lives, even if they take that cash and grab a nearby condo.

Property tax revenue in California is $83.1 billion

It has 40 million residents (who cares if they're citizens or owners or not) - for $2075 per person.

Take another state (I won't even use New Jersey as the highest) - revenue in Texas: $73.5 billion. Population in 2021: 30 million - 2450. Slightly higher, but not much. Texas has no income tax.

Let's take Illinois: $33.8 billion - population in 2020: 13 million - 2600.

I don't think California's woes can be adequately explained by Prop 13.

However, you could fix most of the problem by making commercial property no longer subject to Prop 13.

I see California collected 69.3B & 65.5B in 2021 & 2020 respectively [1] and Texas collected 73.5B & 70.5B in 2021 & 2020 respectively [2]. This leads to more like $1732 for California & 2450 for Texas which is ~40% higher per capita in 2021.

[1] https://bythenumbers.sco.ca.gov/Raw-Data/Property-Tax-Raw-Da...

[2] https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/property-tax/docs/96-172...

Interesting. I used https://www.boe.ca.gov/news/2023/NR-23-04.htm

> What's hard is that a fair solution to Prop 13 is difficult.

I don't think its that hard.

> You can't just shut it off suddenly or even gradually over a decade because people will lose their homes en masse

Eliminate the 2% per annum assessment increase limit entirely for properties transferred after the date of the change. In

Phase it out gradually for other properties but, for owner-occupied primary residences (covered or not) apply the original 2% limit formula as a limit on nondeferrable property tax, allowing deferment of the excess with the state acquiring, in lieu of payment, an interest in the property in proportion to the ratio of the deferred amount to the assessed value (the full tax should decrease as the state acquires interest, but the limit on the non-deferrable amount should not), which the owner can repurchase on the same bases any time before or at transfer.

You could even add an additional limit so that the nondeferrable amount increases at the lowest of 2% or the rate of inflation or (and this is the new bit the owners average annual rate of increase in taxable income over the preceding three year period.)

Seniors don't get forced out of their homes (and not just during a transitional period), and taxes are assessed at full value, and commercial, industrial, and vacation real estate stops getting taxpayer subsidies “justified” by stories about fixed-income senior homowners being forced out of their home.

Some things in policy are hard, but lots of time “its too hard” is really “I don't want to do it, but can't argue against it directly.”

That’s why Germany hasn’t introduced it after WW II.

> And here they are, shitting on someone who tried an innovative way to repeal it, in the service of the very students she covered, because of some meaningless drama. Because their emotions were insufficiently validated

Once you accept that humans are emotional creatures first, and then capable of reasoning, it will make sense. People don't care too much about facts, they care about what they feel more.

Emotions let us reason about ourselves, which rationality alone can't do for us. Because, in a purely rational sense, the "self" doesn't really exist.

Leaders are emotional creatures too. Leaders have great empathy. They look out for people other than themselves.

The problem here isn’t emotions, it’s selfishness. When people say a lack of leadership, they mean a lack of giving a fuck about someone other than yourself. These kids only cared about themselves. They still only care about themselves!

You are reading a great deal into the story that isn't there. I went back and reread it again looking for the reactions you describe. They're not present.

I'm reading into the story alright.

> Jones’ classmates also came off as complicated figures, brilliant and with seemingly endless potential, but so used to diminishing resources that many didn’t see themselves as victims. It’s the resigned lack of ambition... [Jones] found soft drinks and apathy...

> ...many of the students involved grew more resentful and felt unheard.

> I’m not going to calm [the students] down. … I’m not going to try to silence them. If they’re angry and they want to march [to voice their anger at the news article], then I’m going to help them figure out how to do that.

> Tigueros [the student] added: “I’ve got kids now, and imagining that somebody would reveal the secrets that my daughter gave to somebody she trusted? It sounds horrific.”

> Jones didn’t write about the deepest personal secrets discussed in the center...

Tigueros, a now-adult student who was friends with Jones: verbatim only thinking about himself and his family in that quote. And the thing he says verbatim he worries about the most didn't even happen. It doesn't even make sense. It isn't horrific.

I know they were defenseless kids then. But there were also ambitious students at that school. Kids who would benefit from the funding that evaporated. What of them?

The problem here isn’t emotions, it’s selfishness. When people say a lack of leadership, they mean a lack of giving a fuck about someone other than yourself. These kids only cared about themselves. They still only care about themselves!

You're getting all of the above from a one-line quote saying a person who was an unwitting participant in this experiment now considers it to be unethical? Sorry, but it seems like you're looking for something to get mad about to shore up your (quite reasonable) objections to to a tax policy.

> It's insane to me that the now-adult students still oppose the journalist. They were victims of this law. Whatever they are saving on their taxes now, they lose in a lifetime of benefits - money and otherwise - from a better personal education and a better educated community.

You are significantly mischaracterizing the criticisms by the students:

> Trigueros said he was not among the most distressed of Jones’ classmates and listened to both sides of the debate. He understood the Chronicle’s attempt to reveal the challenges facing teachers and students, but said a major line was crossed when Jones stepped into the Peer Resource Center, where the school’s most vulnerable students gravitated and opened up. Nov. 3, 1992: Jonny Dror hangs out at the Peer Resource Center, a gathering space where students could speak their minds at George Washington High School in San Francisco.

> “She saw kids were processing divorces and death and homelessness and coming out. She saw all of that,” he said. “We wanted to consider (Shann the reporter) an ally and advocate for us, (but there was) this deep betrayal, and we didn’t consent to all of that.”

I am not mischaracterizing the criticisms. They should have the maturity by now to see that she was indeed trustworthy, to admit that their gut reactions were wrong, and it is especially bad of them to invoke the modern, pervasive and mischaracterized "consent" framework, today, in defense of their feeling pissed off 30 years ago.

It doesn't change the fact that they are in favor of Prop 13. The average person in California is in favor of Prop 13, and that's exactly the problem! In that sense, it doesn't really matter what happened. They missed the point.

> I am not mischaracterizing the criticisms.

Yes you are. Their criticisms are about their right to privacy being violated by an undercover reporter.

> It doesn't change the fact that they would vote against repealing Prop 13.

I missed the part of the article where a former student said that, can you show me?

> I missed the part of the article where a former student said that, can you show me?

I apologize, I wrote what I was thinking down wrong. They would vote in favor of Prop 13, which is bad. Not sure why I wrote it backwards. It's true that they do not talk about this. But Prop 13 is still law. It is a popular law. Even though it hurt them.

> Their criticisms are about their right to privacy being violated by an undercover reporter.

Where did the reporter violate their privacy? She didn't write anything about it. She was indeed trustworthy. In a sense she met her obligations as a student, however pretend. But she did what a student would do under that covenant. And by the way, students violate each other's privacy then all the time. They aren't reporters, but they also go and tell the secrets she didn't, so are you going to say those students are the antagonists?

Also, she had the approval of the administration. Perhaps they could have said that the peer space or whatever it is was off limits, but truthfully I think it is a much lower drama office than it sounds.

You are getting hung up on really modern and broad meanings of things like privacy and consent and whatever. This isn't intersectionality programming Code of Conduct world. There's a specific thing and a specific harm, that isn't interesting at all, that occurred, in that specific place, with specific students, that doesn't generalize away from, well the students are the antagonists. That is the surprise of all of this. If she hadn't been in that peer counseling office, those same students would be just as pissed off, and they would still be looking out for #1, and still be missing the point entirely.

> I apologize, I wrote what I was thinking down wrong. They would vote against Prop 13, which is bad.

Where in the article does it show students advocating any position on Prop 13? You twisting the narrative to fit your agenda.

> You are getting hung up on really modern and broad meanings of things like privacy and consent and whatever...

Privacy is not a new concept and your response here is revealing.

> You twisting the narrative to fit your agenda.

The students don't advocate any position on Prop 13. It's a popular law, and I'm a betting man, I would bet that the average Californian supports it, so the average student-now-adult does, and indeed, maybe that's why it was so hard for Jones to make a persuasive case. Unambitious students want low taxes more than they wanted better educations - sounds stupid, because it is. Anyway, my agenda is only the surprise at the students being the bad guys.

I think their privacy got validated for some sense of privacy. I just don't think it matters, at all. I think they are wrong to care about it so much, and the particular way and circumstance and sense their violation occurred, keeps me protected for my privacy in all the ways it matters. They are totally orthogonal. Tough cookie.

> The students don't advocate any position on Prop 13. It's a popular law, and I'm a betting man, I would bet that the average Californian supports it, so the average student-now-adult does, and indeed, maybe that's why it was so hard for Jones to make a persuasive case. Unambitious students want low taxes more than they wanted better educations - sounds stupid, because it is. Anyway, my agenda is only the surprise at the students being the bad guys.

Thank you. I appreciate your admission that you made a series of unfounded assumptions and then used that to judge people you don't know.

They would vote in favor of Prop 13, which is bad.

And you know this how, because it hasn't been repealed? Come on.

And by the way, students violate each other's privacy then all the time. They aren't reporters, but they also go and tell the secrets she didn't, so are you going to say those students are the antagonists?

Students don't generally broadcast each others' secrets through a citywide daily newspaper. And while you could argue that the advent of social media gives them equivalent publishing power and some students abuse it, such usage is generally condemned.

You have a weird fixation on the people in this story, maybe it's a good time to go for a walk.

The students were nonconsenting lab rats for a bizarre media experiment. They have every right to feel used or betrayed because they were.

Yeah, and the people in the cars on the blocked highways are also non-consenting whatevers to sitting activists, activisting about whatever it is they feel passionate about. Both suffer some kind of substantive harm right?

I just wonder how you imagine change is achieved. Because you tell me, how is Prop 13 going to get repealed? Are you going to run a ballot initiative? There are lots of popular laws that are bad.

And speaking of, you know, we kill tens of millions of lab mice and rats every year, and rats are quite smart, and the people working with lab mice realize the gravity of the animal suffering they inflict. They are smart people. Every single medicine you use today has animal suffering animal testing on mice related to it.

The nonconsenting media experiment framework people have a much more expansive framework than the one you are invoking, you are invoking a popsci version of it, and your version doesn't accommodate the intractability of everything being consensual. You just don't know enough about this stuff, and you say something kind of reductive that is really about absolving these now-adults of responsibility for their own screwups.

You're getting co-opted by people who only think to the first level of the expanding brain meme. Oh, some people got upset at my innovative form of protest. Boo hoo.

I'm not going to rank one kind of suffering or using or betrayal against another. It doesn't matter. It was definitely in the students' interest to repeal Prop 13. If only they cared!

As if the high school was not already bizzare experiment they were more blackmailed into than consented to.

They really need to get rid of RSO and Prop13 at the same time. Both laws do the same effective thing, one for the renter and one for the homeowner.

Keep RSO but get rid of Prop13 on any non-owner occupied buildings. Multi unit buildings that are not individual condos should automatically be voided out of Prop 13 anyways.

They recently got rid of Prop 13 on inherited homes -- apparently because people got real mad at Jeff Bridges for having a second home -- which is currently fucking me over personally because it's taking a long time to prep the inherited property for sale.

Sorry for your loss.

Given that you are selling it rather than rent it out, it seems to have the intended effect. Just as when I renovated a vacant RSO duplex, I sold it rather than enter rent control again.

Incentives do work, but we accidentally incentivised and subsidized a whole bunch of mom and pop landlords with prop 13.

What is RSO?

The subsidization of mom and pop landlords with Prop 13 basically translates into lower rents overall; without it rents would have to rise (or total rentals decrease, which may be a desirable outcome).

I'm presuming "rent stabilization ordinance", which is specific to Los Angeles, best I can tell:

<https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/los_angeles/latest/lam...>

Yeah the deptiction of students reaction feels very 2024 snowflakey