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I Have Read Prop F

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Re: I Have Read Prop F

#151

Post by gkop »

smsm42 wrote: post #150
gkop wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the response! Your points are reasonable - in fact I fully agree with several - but I am afraid you misunderstood my meaning. I am not arguing for or against the proposition - I just don't think the OP is a quality article around which to have this debate. It's a political scare piece.

It is political, of course - which is only appropriate when discussing questions of policy. I disagree with it being "scare piece" - it describes a bad proposal, and it is appropriate to emphasize the potential dangers and problems, and the claims in the article I personally consider reasonably founded. For example, private right to action is very scary - it generates immense amount of abuse for such things as ADA an…

Now we're talking. Because of private right to action plus one-way attorney fees, the proposition stands to cause a lot of harm. See, it's not that hard to focus your argument and take a stand without resorting to hyberbole.

The OP on the other hand, well I really tried in my first comment to show the OP's hypocrisy, I am not going to be able to do a better job here.

I suppose one measure is, how much did private right to action and one-way attorney fees come up in the HN discussion of the article? Not enough, and never (?) with the kind of historical context you are hereby providing (also missing from the OP). I'd posit that the OP did successfully scare more than 0 readers into considering voting against the proposition. So while the article may not be entirely without social utility (scare pieces have utility!), it's not a "smart" article, and it didn't do a good job of explaining the real critical problems with F. And it successfully made me feel alienated from and judgemental toward the No On F crowd.

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#152

Post by abalone »

curun1r wrote: post #71
abalone wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit overblown. Civil lawsuits cost money to prosecute, so they're unlikely to be pursued unless there's a good chance of winning.

Yes, but by setting a minimum damage amount of $250/night, you've removed the most difficult aspect of a case like this. It would be incredibly difficult to prove that a neighbor's having guest caused a high dollar amount of damages. Without needing to do that, all the person pursuing the case needs to show is that the law was violated and they'll be eligible for potentially thousands of dollars in damages. That crea…

> all the person pursuing the case needs to show is that the law was violated

I think you're misunderstanding the point of the proposition a little bit. It's not just about recovering direct damages to neighbors (e.g. noise). It's about using incentives to crowdsource enforcement that the city doesn't have the resources to do.

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#153

Post by mdpopescu »

tmuir wrote: post #79
fredkbloggs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very easy to not have an opinion. Whether my neighbor wants to rent out part of his property via airbnb, craigslist, or not at all makes no difference to me. It does not affect my quality of life, does not interfere with my enjoyment of my own property, and is a private transaction among 3 (or more) parties of which I am not one. I just don't care, at all. That doesn't mean that his tenants might not cause…

Some towns don't have noise ordinances. Thus, lets assume someone rents out their house. The renters hire a band with a powerful PA system, and play from dusk til dawn. How will you deal with the tenants? You have precisely zero recourse, because they aren't breaking any laws. Isn't it obvious that these situations are far more likely to happen with short term tenancies than people who rent for a year, or own? It's s…

I have a neighbor (he was here before me) who gets drunk about every weekend and does exactly that. We do have noise ordinances. The police never bothers to show up.

How can I also blame this on AirBnB and possibly extort them for large amounts of money? /s

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#154

Post by abalone »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #13
abalone wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit overblown. Civil lawsuits cost money to prosecute, so they're unlikely to be pursued unless there's a good chance of winning.

Have you ever lived in a community with an HOA? Some of the people there take finding violations, infractions, and actionable offenses as their second job, and will not hesitate to sue you just because. So enabling these people by requiring the city to help them sue is like dumping a tanker full of kerosene on a forest fire.

No doubt the point of the law is to tap into community activism. But it's different from suing your neighbor over the hedge you don't like. Prop F is much more objective and substantive about what constitutes a violation than your typical HOA covenant: illegal hosting. Neighbors and their legal teams are unlikely to sue over that unless they think they can really prove a violation.

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#155

Post by skuhn »

steven2012 wrote: post #147
skuhn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't respond directly to ubernostrom, and my comment doesn't discuss whether prop 13 creates a perverse incentive for landowners in any respect (although: it does). I'm saying that if you tie your revenue stream (i.e. taxes) to something that is essentially fixed at 1970's levels, but you have to buy things with it in 2015 money, you are going to not have a good time. You can still keep property tax as part of yo…

Nothing is fixed to 1970s levels. Property taxes get reassessed when there's a sale on the property. How many properties in CA have not changed hands since 1970, ie more than 40 years? Probably none, since that's almost 2 generations of families.

I think you might be surprised. There are a ton of exceptions to reassessment [1]. A notable one is that transfers from parent to child are typically excluded, meaning that you can indeed pass down low property taxes from generation to generation.

Commercial property is also covered under the same rules, and there are ways to keep it from being reassessed [2][3].

Improvements to the property will trigger reassessment, if the changes pass a certain threshold. This incentivizes owners not to improve their property (particularly externally). Look around San Francisco, and you can see the effect this has had (along with other factors like rent control). Anecdotally, I've heard of people replacing one window a year because they didn't want to trigger a reassessment. That is just flat out absurd.

There is a cottage industry dedicated to avoiding property tax reassessment, entirely because of prop 13. This isn't how it works elsewhere in the country. There are other, better solutions out there. However, it is virtually impossible to alter or repeal prop 13 because it was a ballot proposition -- it will outlive all of us.

[1] https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/changeinownership.htm

[2] http://closetheloophole.com/history

[3] http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert...

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#156

Post by eru »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #104
thrwwy707 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing Are these people completely insane? Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock? Houston has famously lax zoning laws, and as a consequence has seen much greater population growth (31% vs 18% from 1980-2010 per wikipedia) yet experienced none of these same problems.

Lax zoning laws has created its own set of problems for Houston -- infamously horrible sprawl, for one.

See http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/11/30/the_myth_of_z...

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#157

Post by eru »

Bjartr wrote: post #108
thrwwy707 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Prop I is a moratorium on building new market-rate housing Are these people completely insane? Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock? Houston has famously lax zoning laws, and as a consequence has seen much greater population growth (31% vs 18% from 1980-2010 per wikipedia) yet experienced none of these same problems.

>Shouldn't there be propositions for denser zoning, land reclamation, or other measures that would increase the SF housing stock? What, and hurt profit margins?

If you can build up, you can rent out to more people..

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#158

Post by eru »

skuhn wrote: post #120
Redoubts wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly should they do?

Don't make all of your money from a property tax that does not increase as your costs to provide services increase. There are options besides property tax for raising tax revenue. City-level local income tax is the first thing that comes to mind.

Property taxes are awesome: they do not distort economic activity (if done right), and they are hard to evade (since you can't hide your land).

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#159

Post by eru »

narrator wrote: post #69
jfb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all comes back to Proposition 13, which crippled local governments.

Imagine how many people who've owned their homes for years would be forced to sell and move elsewhere in San Francisco if prop 13 were repealed.

Is that a bad thing?

Re: I Have Read Prop F

#160

Post by eru »

rl3 wrote: post #111

Serious question: has subterranean housing ever been considered for SF? If you can't build out or up, may as well build under. Feasibility aside, the only problem I see is it'd create a literal underclass—as opposed to the proverbial one that exists now as a result of absurd rent prices.

> If you can't build out or up, may as well build under.

You can only not build up because of regulation. Building under probably comes with regulation, too.

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