[mikerg87]

California in the early 80s wasn’t fun. We left SF in ‘83. Interest rates around 15%. Minimum wage around $2.50/hr. Gas rationing. you could only buy gas on certain days based on your license plate. There was an apartment above a garage in SF that sold for $200,000 that was fixup and the garage wasn’t part of the deal.

My parents moved us to they east coast where they did finally purchase their own home.

[greedo]

Gas rationing in the 80s? I think you're off a decade. I lived in SoCal in the 80s and there was no rationing. During the Oil embargo in 73 there was the odd/even rationing, but that didn't continue into the 80s.

[dragonwriter]

California (and several other states) also implemented even/odd rationing in response to the 1979 oil crisis.

[bcrosby95]

My parents almost had to leave in the late 70s. They moved to San Jose to work in tech. Bought a house in 72 or so. Their home value tripled in around 6 years and so did their property taxes.

[ghaff]

Which is why Prop 13 got passed. It may have bad features and bad side effects but IMO you really don't want to force people to sell their homes because their property taxes have rapidly gone up.

[supernova87a]

One way that other states have done it more intelligently is to allow people to stay in their homes as long as they want, and not paying the proper tax bill. When they die/sell, that $ liability gets deducted from their house sale price.

[dragonwriter]

The bad features and bad side effects are the point, avoiding forcing people on limited incomes out of their homes was a convenient leverage point that could be much better served by more targeted policy.

Like, for one, if that was actually your policy goal, the policy would only apply to primary residences, not all real property.

[ghaff]

Totally agree. I have no personal stake in it but Prop 13 certainly seems to be overly broad for its goal as I understand it of not forcing people out of their homes and neighborhood if they gentrify or otherwise shoot up in value. (Mind you, you can also make points about a long-time neighborhood restaurant that's forced to close because of taxes.)

[Lammy]

> The bad features and bad side effects are the point

Agreed, especially with how good Prop 13 is at baking existing segregation in forever, since then nothing else makes economic sense on the individual level except to stay put.