4 ms·

Real Estate is the official state religion of California, and Prop 13 is our gospel. God willing, if we all just lock arms and make sure nothing new ever gets b

by bdrool 11y ago

Real Estate is the official state religion of California, and Prop 13 is our gospel. God willing, if we all just lock arms and make sure nothing new ever gets built, we can all enjoy the free money that comes from our artificially-limited housing supply, at least for those lucky enough to have gotten in early. (Everyone else can go pound sand.) And the best part? The press will willingly write article after article snidely implying that it's all the fault of the young tech workers who have the audacity to move here in hopes of having a career. No one will ever mention that it's actually the fat bloated homeowners who are the cause of it all.

crdoconnor 11y ago
Prop 13 wasn't driven by homeowners, it was driven by property developers. Homeowners are just along for the ride. Untaxing land - as prop 13 did - is essentially just the privatization of the right to collect tax.
- mathattack 11y ago
  Yes - rent seeking in both the economic and colloquial definition. :-)
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Prop 13 is a blatant wealth transfer from the young, who have to pay taxes based on today's prices, to the old, who got in long ago and pay their taxes based on yesterday's prices.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    It's more of a wealth transfer from poor to rich than it is young to old.
ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
Well, TBH it is the tech workers driving demand-if you believe as I do that the increased supply of housing will greatly moderate prices, the flip side of that is that demand does exist, and the demand part of supply and demand works. The solution (build more, lots more) is obvious, but its not like accepting 200K/year FB/Apple/etc job doesn't have moral issues attached.
- mc32 11y ago
  It really does not have any moral issues attached to moving into a given community and paying rent or buying property so long as you're not engaging in illegal behavior like forced evictions, etc. It's like saying the poor moving into an affluent or apartments built in an affluent area have moral considerations because riff raff have a tendency to drive down prices of the real estate of homeowners. It cuts both ways and neither makes sense.
- totalrobe 11y ago
  Wow, so accepting a high paying engineering job with a consumer tech company is now immoral? It's not like they're building weapons like the majority of tech on the east coast.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  What baffles me is that rent increases get blamed on the tenant looking for a decent place to live, instead of on the landlord who actually increases the rent. If we're going to blame a human at all, why aren't we blaming the person who is directly making the change?
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    Why wouldn't the landlord raise rent? There's not a lot of housing alternatives (the supply of housing) and if your average tenant makes 125K instead of 70K, why not gouge them?
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      I don't understand why people think that "making as much money as possible is the most important thing in the world" is a convincing moral argument. You could, for example, have argued that wealthier tenants lead to rising property values, which means the landlord has to raise his rents just to break even on the property taxes. That would have been a coherent argument that absolves all individual blame. Why would you lead with "greed is good"? (And, again, I'm not personally saying that either the tenant or the landlord is at fault. I just don't understand why, if I've just been driven out of my home and I'm looking for someone nearby to blame, I would choose to pin it on the new tenant instead of the landlord.)

by bdrool 11y ago

crdoconnor 11y ago

Prop 13 wasn't driven by homeowners, it was driven by property developers. Homeowners are just along for the ride. Untaxing land - as prop 13 did - is essentially just the privatization of the right to collect tax.

mathattack 11y ago
Yes - rent seeking in both the economic and colloquial definition. :-)
ryandrake 11y ago
Prop 13 is a blatant wealth transfer from the young, who have to pay taxes based on today's prices, to the old, who got in long ago and pay their taxes based on yesterday's prices.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  It's more of a wealth transfer from poor to rich than it is young to old.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago

Well, TBH it is the tech workers driving demand-if you believe as I do that the increased supply of housing will greatly moderate prices, the flip side of that is that demand does exist, and the demand part of supply and demand works. The solution (build more, lots more) is obvious, but its not like accepting 200K/year FB/Apple/etc job doesn't have moral issues attached.

mc32 11y ago
It really does not have any moral issues attached to moving into a given community and paying rent or buying property so long as you're not engaging in illegal behavior like forced evictions, etc. It's like saying the poor moving into an affluent or apartments built in an affluent area have moral considerations because riff raff have a tendency to drive down prices of the real estate of homeowners. It cuts both ways and neither makes sense.
totalrobe 11y ago
Wow, so accepting a high paying engineering job with a consumer tech company is now immoral? It's not like they're building weapons like the majority of tech on the east coast.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
What baffles me is that rent increases get blamed on the tenant looking for a decent place to live, instead of on the landlord who actually increases the rent. If we're going to blame a human at all, why aren't we blaming the person who is directly making the change?
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  Why wouldn't the landlord raise rent? There's not a lot of housing alternatives (the supply of housing) and if your average tenant makes 125K instead of 70K, why not gouge them?
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    I don't understand why people think that "making as much money as possible is the most important thing in the world" is a convincing moral argument. You could, for example, have argued that wealthier tenants lead to rising property values, which means the landlord has to raise his rents just to break even on the property taxes. That would have been a coherent argument that absolves all individual blame. Why would you lead with "greed is good"? (And, again, I'm not personally saying that either the tenant or the landlord is at fault. I just don't understand why, if I've just been driven out of my home and I'm looking for someone nearby to blame, I would choose to pin it on the new tenant instead of the landlord.)