> That area is now expensive enough that even with Prop 13 her children have to pay her property taxes for her. I'm not sure I believe that. As I understand i

> That area is now expensive enough that even with Prop 13 her children have to pay her property taxes for her. I'm not sure I believe that. As I understand it, Prop 13 caps property tax increases on a given property to a maximum ~2% per year. [0] Your property's value is not reassessed, no matter what happens to other properties in the area! The only way for a property to be reassessed (and -thus- for its tax to dramatically increase-) is for it to change hands, or for major improvements to be performed to the property. Even in the case of major improvements, the value of just the improvement is assessed and added to the value of the property as a whole. The unimproved portion of the property is not reassessed. Am I dramatically misunderstanding something about Prop 13? Or were you saying "The cost of living at this mom's place is now so high that she can't even afford to pay the Prop 13-suppressed property tax on her property."? [0] Inflation is generally understood to be ~3% per year, and has been for at least a decade... so this means that property taxes increase at a rate that is lower than inflation.