201–210 of 461 posts
California's housing policy failures have repercussions up and down the west coast. It's sad they didn't follow Oregon's lead and legalize some more diverse housing options.
The real answer is to legalize and tax it. Prop 13 is a huge distortion on the California real estate market.
Thank you for this.
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So a retired person should be forced to move from his little 3 bedroom house because some Googler decided the house next door was worth $3.5MM and his property tax goes up to $75,000/year? That's pure evil. I fully supported SB50. Build. More. Housing.
It's also pure evil that a retired person can't sell his 3 bedroom house to a quad- or 5-plex developer, not move (except temporarily while it's being rebuilt), and get a nice chunk of cash, because his other neighbors don't want the "neighborhood character" to change.
Well the only solution is a ballot initiative to repeal prop 13. That will change things.
Prop 13 was created because it was forcing people out of their houses because of inflation property values on paper. That is detrimental. You shouldn't scrap it completely; you should limit it to primary residences (spend more than half the year there). That would get rid of some of the worse issues. It shocks me every time I hear fellow left-of-center people talk about scrapping Prop 13, but then also rail against g…
Low income seniors have https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html so Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary for them.
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Do you feel that it is fair to evict an old couple because they purchased their house in the 70s when it was in the woods, but now that people have built up a town around them, they have to go because they didn't plan on paying $7,400 per year in property taxes in their retirement planning, and then also can't afford to take on a new mortgage in the region, so move really far away from where they saved for and planne…
Financial instruments can turn their equity into an annuity which will pay the taxes, or the taxes can be deferred until they die or sell. The rest of the world manages without Prop 13.
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Principled is a way of making it sound less terrible than 'restrained'. California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts.
While Environmentalism is definitely classist, and CEQA has played a part in preventing affordable development in cities, there are so many other factors that boiling it down to environmentalism is absurd. If anything, CEQA and other environmental regulations have contributed more to improving the quality of life for working class people and the poor than it has contributed to their detriment. California is the media…
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Exactly right. And every time a property is turned over, the base tax rate gets reset, plus prop 13 allows for a 2% increase every year. California has the highest sales and income tax (for incomes over $500,000) in the Nation. They don't need the highest property tax, too.
>> They don't need the highest property tax, too. Prop 13 doesn't change the property tax rate, it changes WHO pays the full "nub" rate and who enjoys a "nobility" rebate. It disincentives home owners from moving, even when their new jobs are far away, increasing commuting time. It also creates a resource allocation imbalance. Folks that are retired and don't benefit so much by living in highly concentrated job areas…
Part of it was capping rates.
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The real answer is to legalize and tax it. Prop 13 is a huge distortion on the California real estate market.
Prop 13 is a huge distortion to tax and revenue generally, but it doesn't promote anti-development NIMBYism. If anything, Prop 13 should make denser development more tolerable to existing residents as otherwise denser development in their neighborhood would lead to accelerated increases in assessed land values. That's the very reason Prop 13 was enacted in the first place--to improve ownership security in the face of…
When the carrying costs of a piece of property are artificially low there isn't nearly as much incentive to put that piece of property to its best and highest use, so you end up with people being just fine with single family houses instead of multi story apartment buildings.
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That’s not true. Any city in California has total authority to adjust their zoning code. Cities change zoning as a matter of routine business. The reason cities have not done anything constructive is each individual small government is held hostage by its own incumbent land owners.
They can do it, it takes 8-10 years. Look at the eastern neighborhoods plan in SF, it literally took 20 years. Part of that is shitty nimby neighbors, part of that is area plans are able to be litigated under CEQA, which Is basically guaranteed, and it adds 4-8 years to an area plan project. My point is that it’s literally illegal to do, but it’s functionally impossible, or at least extremely difficult and it takes a…
You’re right that people will sue over anything, and that’s why I support state preemptions in this case, but there’s no excuse for what cities have failed to do.
Massachussets has a law that enables developers to bypass zoning restrictions if they are helping bring low income housing to an area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Comprehensive_Pe... I think it's sometimes used to threaten local zoning boards to capitulate to other developer demands, but it does contribute somewhat to the supply of affordable housing.
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Prop 13 is a huge distortion to tax and revenue generally, but it doesn't promote anti-development NIMBYism. If anything, Prop 13 should make denser development more tolerable to existing residents as otherwise denser development in their neighborhood would lead to accelerated increases in assessed land values. That's the very reason Prop 13 was enacted in the first place--to improve ownership security in the face of…
Prop 13 is a huge distortion to tax and revenue generally, but it doesn't promote anti-development NIMBYism. When the carrying costs of a piece of property are artificially low there isn't nearly as much incentive to put that piece of property to its best and highest use, so you end up with people being just fine with single family houses instead of multi story apartment buildings.
And then redeveloping resets the tax basis.
Both of these appear to favor holding onto older substandard property.