> It’s a policy perfectly designed to entrench the advantages of whoever got here first, and it’s been untouched for nearly fifty years.
I don’t live in California, but my state has a similar policy where property tax increases are capped.
As far as it was explained to me, this isn’t designed as a finders-keepers law, the way it’s framed here. It’s designed to allow people to age in-place. So those who move to an area don’t end up priced out of their own neighborhoods due to excessive property tax increases.
There is an old lady who lives down the street from me, she’s probably in her 80s or 90s. She’s always outside slowly picking up the small branches that fall from her trees. She’s been in the house so long that Zillow doesn’t have a record of it. Had property taxes risen unchecked, she would likely have been forced out of the home she lived in for decades.
People without a house will shake their fists at these policies, but if they didn’t exist, fists would be shaken to fight against the problem these policies looked to solve.
Not to mention, they still benefit new homeowners today. I just bought a home a few years ago. It gives me some peace of mind knowing that my property taxes won’t randomly double sometime in the future. I spent 16 years renting, and moved almost every year when they tried to raise my rent. Maybe it’s the rental market that’s broken, not the model for capping property taxes.
The outcome depends on the perspective of the person being talked about.
For the people looking to buy a home, do they really want to buy a home where property taxes can be raised without a limit? One of the benefits to home ownership is locking in housing expenses. A home becomes a lot less appealing when property taxes go unchecked.
You’re assuming all homeowners are rich. The whole point of capping property taxes increases is to not price normal people out of their homes. Home prices in California went up a lot over the past several decades. It is possible that someone is “rich” when it comes to net worth, because their home appreciated in value a lot, but that doesn’t help cash flow, which is what would be required to pay the property taxes. Because their home went up in value, should they be expected to sell the house, just to pay the taxes, and get pushed back to a rental? That sounds rather dystopian.
I’m all for rent control. If home owners can lock in rates, so should renters. We should encourage long-term stable rentals, instead of forcing people to move constantly. I would think landlords would want long-term stable renters, but my experience doesn’t align with that (except for one place).
The sales tax is high, but it’s not so far off other states that it looks egregious.
Income tax is only mentioned once in the article and it says it’s progressive, which is what the author seems to want. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take issue with there?
I rose an issue with the property taxes, because I think there is another side to the coin that is important.
>Because their home went up in value, should they be expected to sell the house, just to pay the taxes, and get pushed back to a rental?
Not that it's always necessarily ideal, but presumably they could sell the house and buy one in a cheaper community, that's sorta the natural flow of neighborhoods. People buy into a neighborhood and raise their families and then sell to new families after their kids move out and then they move on to smaller retirement sized homes.
You have choice, something people in other states don't have. I bought a 3 bedroom like-new home in the Sierra foothills for less than half the state median home price. Backup power, my own well. It's a prepper's (and photographer's) paradise, though I am not a prepper.
People work from home here at jobs elsewhere.
If things are bad, take action. Fight regulatory capture by utilities and (ahem) Giant tech companies. Fight billionaires' campaigns against the average homeowner and renter. Prop 13 was meant to keep taxes down for businesses that never move. Citizens move often, except for a handful. Don't trust tech execs. Many of them are on powerful drugs. The wealthy can never have enough. Any solution is extremely difficult due to the extreme concentration of wealth.
There are large cities with everything you need ... airport, Amtrak, medical facilities and ta-da universities, at half the state median price.
I see new home developments replacing farm land. People love the multicultural and energetic, high tech and old redwood bay and coastal areas. Having lived in the bay some 30 years and in the woods some 10 years, here's a clue. The state and your community is its PEOPLE.
Very often, the price of cheap is a monoculture. The hell with that.
I don’t live in California, but my state has a similar policy where property tax increases are capped.
As far as it was explained to me, this isn’t designed as a finders-keepers law, the way it’s framed here. It’s designed to allow people to age in-place. So those who move to an area don’t end up priced out of their own neighborhoods due to excessive property tax increases.
There is an old lady who lives down the street from me, she’s probably in her 80s or 90s. She’s always outside slowly picking up the small branches that fall from her trees. She’s been in the house so long that Zillow doesn’t have a record of it. Had property taxes risen unchecked, she would likely have been forced out of the home she lived in for decades.
People without a house will shake their fists at these policies, but if they didn’t exist, fists would be shaken to fight against the problem these policies looked to solve.
Not to mention, they still benefit new homeowners today. I just bought a home a few years ago. It gives me some peace of mind knowing that my property taxes won’t randomly double sometime in the future. I spent 16 years renting, and moved almost every year when they tried to raise my rent. Maybe it’s the rental market that’s broken, not the model for capping property taxes.