I get that their Victorian houses are pretty, but they're only about a 100 years old and they are now crammed full of people and cars. It's too young of a city to be sycophantically in love with its past self.
So, it attracts the foreign investors looking for stores of value and encourages NIMBYism.
If the tax bill of properties in high value locations went up with land value then it would encourage people to stop hoarding and to sell up and have their properties redeveloped.
So, blame Howard Jarvis and his taxpayer's foundation.
This doesn't make a lot of sense for two reasons.
The first is that real estate is more the exception than the rule in being subject to property tax to begin with. If foreign investors want a store of value that minimizes "property tax" then they could just buy stocks or bonds etc. Which is why "foreign investors" are a red herring that pundits keep bringing up because it's clickbait or because they want a scapegoat to divert attention from the real problem (which is zoning).
The second is that if you have a place where taxes are lower than other places, that's the place people should be lobbying to build things. Who wants their lower taxes to be on a $1M single family home when they could be on a $100M skyscraper? The main reason this isn't happening is that the effective property tax rate in California is ~0.7% compared to the national average of ~0.9%, which isn't enough different to make a dramatic difference.
The real problem with prop 13 is that it resets on sale transactions or if you build anything, which does provide a major deterrent to construction because then existing property owners neither want to sell to a developer and use the money to buy something else nor build anything on their property themselves since either one would result in a huge tax hike.
This is exactly the point. If property taxes were higher that flow of capital wouldn't seek store-of-value assets which monopolize valuable land and deprive ordinary people of somewhere to live.
>foreign investors" are a red herring that pundits keep bringing up because it's clickbait or because they want a scapegoat
More like the reverse is ardent defense of the interests of the super wealthy.
They channel their media networks towards scapegoating immigrants instead. Or AI. Or selfish boomers. Or any number of other things which aren't really the problem and most importantly aren't them.
>The second is that if you have a place where taxes are lower than other places, that's the place people should be lobbying to build things
People want to build things because they are useful. People will NIMBY the fuck out of that if it affects the value of their property which it does, disproportionately if property taxes are low.
This is how San Francisco ruined itself - with precisely that attitude of "lower taxes = better"
Only they still would, because the higher property taxes would deter new construction until scarcity increases rents to the level that investment gets back over the threshold of profitability. And then investors are still there and what you've really done is cause rents to increase to the level that allows landlords to use it to pay the higher property tax.
> They channel their media networks towards scapegoating immigrants instead. Or AI. Or selfish boomers. Or any number of other things which aren't really the problem and most importantly aren't them.
Are "selfish boomers" not the problem in this case? Who are the ones lobbying for NIMBY zoning rules?
> This is how San Francisco ruined itself - with precisely that attitude of "lower taxes = better"
The big problem with prop 13 isn't that it lowers taxes, it's that it disproportionately raises them if you build anything new on your land or sell it to anyone who wants to.
It’s 2026, they’re more like 140 year old by now :)
> now crammed full of people and cars
Funnily enough, if you look at the 1950 census, in every single building I have lived in in San Francisco, there were more people than there are now :).
The city has so much underdeveloped land (come on, 2% of of the surface of of the second densest city in the US spent on the lowest density sport ever, golf???), tearing down our heritage does not make sense when we have so much usable space.
Also I never understood this obsession with "heritage". Why not promote the next generation of SF architecture instead? Modernize the victorian into increased density, create something new and creative. Over time blend the new-ness with the old. This ideology of stasis seems at-odds with SF's image as an innovation hub, both technologically and culturally. Why should our architecture be stagnant when our ethos is to constantly push forward?
This is one of the big loses we've had to NIMBYism / prop 13 / regressive zoning. We could have such cool, interesting architectural advances, but ironically our perverse urban development incentive structure discourages those kinds of innovations.
I’m in Europe and here if people suggested to tear down some art noveau buildings because they’re just 100-150 years old… I’d be absolutely furious. Don’t get me started on buildings from 200 or 300 years ago.
With US having much less old buildings, I totally get why people want to preserve such buildings.
To directly answer your question about where to draw the line a simple heuristic is to leave public buildings alone. This can even include a privately owned shop that is accessible to the public. They are part of the cities culture. Private homes in the other hand shouldn't be protected.
Exemptions like you suggest would just open the gates for fancy corruption schemes. Here the public is okay-ish about historical buildings changes hands specifically because of strict rules.
A lot of public institutions are now moving from historical buildings to new buildings in outskirts because old buildings are expensive to maintain and not flexible enough for modern office working. And those historical buildings frequently get renovated (or, sometimes, reverted to) apartments. And the public is fine in general.
Excuse me if I’m wrong, but most of business activity is already not in SF. But people love living in SF for it’s charm. If you destroy the charm for the sake of lowering prices… why would people pick SF-proper instead of same boring buildings outside of the peninsula?