[apendleton]

> rich developers will all be getting a huge property tax break

These proposals would generally be revenue-neutral, so the same amount of total tax would be collected, but assessed by parcel (adjusted for demand) rather than by parcel + improvements. An area where there was demand to house lots of people might still have high taxes because the land would be in high-demand because of its potential to host big buildings, whether the buildings were there or not. In other words: they'd have to build the building to afford the tax, because if they put a parking lot on it or whatever, the taxes would swamp any revenue.

As to small businesses/homeowners: ideally in such a scheme, improvements they might want to make would be more affordable than they are under the current system, because they wouldn't owe taxes on the increased value. Ultimately though, you're right: systems like this are meant to address a circumstance where nobody can afford housing because there's way more need than there is supply, by incentivizing increasing the density of housing in such areas, which means some small structures will need to be torn down and replaced with bigger ones, and people unwilling or unable to do that will be incentivized to sell to someone who can. Their well-being gets weighed against the hypothetical well-being of the larger number of people that might otherwise be housed by the larger structures that would replace where they live now.