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California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

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Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#411

Post by zpallin »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #190
zpallin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEQA requirements are exempt from affordable housing developments. And developing Coyote Valley has never been about affordable housing. Essentially all of the proposals to develop Coyote Valley have catered to high-income home owners and renters. Even the mayor said in that article that preserving Coyote Valley contributes to the city's affordable housing goals.

It all helps. Relieve the shortage in high-income housing, and maybe they'll stop bidding up the prices for (formerly) lower-income housing because they had to live somewhere .

Sprawl does not help with lowering the cost of living, so no. It doesn't all help.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#412

Post by scarface74 »

tptacek wrote: post #406
scarface74 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s “predictable” about having to pay taxes on a property that you don’t know how much will appreciate? Someone who bought a house 30 years ago while they were working, paid it off and had enough in savings to pay their bills but not pay taxes on a house that went up 10x the rate of inflation couldn’t predict their tax bill. What happens when they can’t pay their taxes? The government takes it.

This is an unserious argument. ED and property taxes aren't comparably unpredictable. An obvious illustration of this would be the fact that most places in the US don't have California's cap, and people manage tax planning just fine. If your real argument is, essentially, "taxation is theft", that's a coherent position, but since most people don't agree with the premise, you're not left with much to contribute to thi…

No, I’m not saying that “taxation” is theft, but the undercurrent of raising property taxes on people who have been living in their houses for years is that the land could be better use by “more productive” tech bro’s than old people and if you raise the taxes enough, they would be forced to move.

Those same tech bro’s would hate it if they were taxed on unrealized, illiquid wealth.

But, yes there are plenty of jurisdictions that give property tax breaks to senior citizens.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#413

Post by scarface74 »

harryh wrote: post #393
scarface74 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough so we should also tax equity in private companies. That money could also be used for positive economic activity.....

I'm glad you've come around to my p.o.v. on property taxes! The pros and cons of a mark to market capital gains tax are pretty far outside of the scope of this thread, so I will save my thoughts on them for another day.

It’s the same concept. You want to tax illiquid unrealized wealth that may force people to sell the underlying illiquid asset to pay taxes.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#414

Post by scarface74 »

harryh wrote: post #402
scarface74 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of police, fire fighters, schools, roads, etc. don’t go up with the value of the home. There is no reason that you couldn’t charge a flat rate to every property owner - including businesses.

We could do that, but then it would be more like a poll tax or a head tax instead of a consumption tax.

How so, taxes are meant to fund the government and services they provide. Everyone who lives in a jurisdiction either consumes those government resources or we as a society have decided that it was in the common good to provide those services (ie education).

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#415

Post by manfredo »

Pfhreak wrote: post #355
manfredo wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it will displace communities while the housing is built and there's no guarantee the tenants can move back. Increasing the supply of housing displaces no one. What do you mean "no guarantee that tenants can move back"? A new apartment building creates units that new residents can move into instead of out-bidding residents on the existing supply of housing. An apartment that doesn't get built is an existing…

People cannot live in a building under construction, they have to find somewhere else to live while it is being built. To build a new apartment, you need to tear down some existing housing. And they probably lose their rent control in the process. So, some percentage of current residents will be forced to leave permanently. This is fixable with some regulation, but it's a really common oversight in these discussions.…

> People cannot live in a building under construction, they have to find somewhere else to live while it is being b

Incorrect. Apartments can be built on empty lots or on land currently used for things other than apartments. Yet this kind of construction still meets fierce opposition from people claiming to be preventing gentrification:

https://missionlocal.org/2019/02/how-the-developer-of-sfs-hi...

https://reason.com/video/san-francisco-mission-housing-crisi...

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#416

Post by generalpass »

koboll wrote: post #287
dragonwriter wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This decision is extremely frustrating coming from a legislature filled with landlords. Not only do the people have the power to vote out legislators, in California they also have the power to bypass them and legislate directly. But, while there is broad consensus that housing is a problem, there isn't broad consensus on solutions among the public any more than there is among legislators.

Homeowners are disproportionately likely to vote, so their constituents no doubt agree with them on this issue. The real problem is that when you incentivize and subsidize putting your net worth into a single large investment vehicle, and then let holders of that investment decide how much competition to it will be allowed nearby, it creates a vicious cycle of ever-increasing supply shortage. Eventually, of course, t…

If I understand it correctly, when people die the state and IRS collect taxes from the estate based on the value. Since most people these days die in debt, it's most likely the property will have to be sold to cover the taxes owed by the estate.

This would mean the inheritance in many cases will be the cash left over from the property sale.

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#417

Post by joe_the_user »

BurningFrog wrote: post #373
joe_the_user wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP: Curse those environmentalists Parent: This obviously isn't environmentally friendly or motivated and the opposite of what an environmentalist would want. You: Well, they believe they're being environmental, even if it's self serving BS (here, let define self-serving BS).

One realization that's helped me a lot: Yes, people talking self serving nonsense are lying. But they're primarily lying to themselves !!! Essential book: https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyda... TED talk version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V84_F1QWdeU

Yes, people talking self serving nonsense are lying. But they're primarily lying to themselves!

When we're talking this kind of phenomena, we certainly using language at a very high level of abstraction. But the "color" of how one expresses one's self matters even more. What "primary" means here is key, for example.

People talking self-serving nonsense often believe what they're saying, maybe more than someone taking a rational position ('cause rationality involves some self doubt).

The main question, in a sense is "are these people 'out to get us'?". On the one hand, one can give the defense, "they aren't consciously trying to put their interests ahead of yours and aren't trying to deceive you" but there's the other factor that this sort of strategy can be the very best strategy for people putting their interests ahead of you and /or deceiving you, which makes them your most effective enemies.

I mean, if you dig deep down, the terrible people "are victims too". Does that mean you shouldn't blame them? Well, the terrible people need to be defeated and punished appropriately, in a judgmental way, to prevent them from doing the stuff we don't like and to fill those who might consider it with fear (still non-judgmentally).

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#418

Post by amunicio »

scarface74 wrote: post #364
harryh wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes aren't wealth taxes, they're consumption taxes. This is obvious when you consider the fact that a person who owns a piece of property outright pays the same property tax as someone who owns a similar piece of property but carries a mortgage.

Does a person who owns a $1 million dollar home "consume" more resources than a person who owns a $200K home? What if the homes are the same but in different parts of the city?

This is not a good argument. It would be the equivalent of me asking: Does the trash pickup service, repairing potholes or patrolling the street cost more if the home owner just moved in than if has own the house for 30 years?

Re: California's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate

#420

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

exjdjeejfh wrote: post #76
yonran wrote: post #27

California has a more principled approach to housing capacity planning called RHNA, in which the state sets a zoning budget (like that proposed by David Schleicher https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/4955/ ) and then delegates to local governments the responsibility to zone to allow enough houses to meet that budget. Unfortunately, the RHNA has numerous flaws including vastly underestimating the “need,” la…

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.

when you restrain housing, everyone suffers.
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