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Comment by chaqke | Hacker News Reader

Not intending to be harsh, but your grandmother could use the equity established in her property, and move to somewhere where the costs of living are within her means.

In cases where the property has appreciated so much that the increase in property taxes is a burden, surely there is a corresponding increase in equity to lessen the blow.

The "CA Prop 13" option pretty much makes newcomers finance existing landowners' property taxes - not my favorite option.

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Prop. 13 is a disaster in another way. Because commercial buildings are higher-valued, it is now common for them never to be sold. They are just spun out as a separate entity, and that entity changes hands.

Since they are never sold, their property tax base never increases (re-assessment happens most often after a sale). So there has also been a net transfer of property tax burden from commercial to residential property.

More and more people are doing it too, I think. I was looking at property records, and a surprisingly large number of them were owned by various "trust"s .

> but your grandmother could use the equity established in her property, and move to somewhere where the costs of living are within her means.

Isn't keeping people in the city the whole reason you want to raise property taxes in the first place? Reduce the incentive of people to hold empty condos, so people can live in the city. So asking her to leave is the opposite goal to raising the real estate taxes.

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