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In my personal fantasy, killing Proposition 13 would be done in a progressive manner. Grandma who has paid off her house in Westwood Park and is now a paper mil

• hx87 10y ago
  In my personal fantasy, Grandma would keep her 1975 property tax level, as long as her municipality allows her and her neighbors to build or convert her house into apartments. Low property taxes should be rewards for a lack of NIMBYism.
  • Decade 10y ago
    Yeah, I’m not so heartless. Attitudes like that are why pro-development people have attracted a reputation as bullies and villains. Grandma wants to live out her days in the small house and quiet neighborhood where she has lived her life? Too bad, her land is more useful to society being consolidated into a tower full of “luxury” apartments. That may be true. Especially in San Francisco, where grandmas and older gentlemen form a voting bloc that have delayed construction all over the Bay Area. But that doesn’t make it right in my mind to force grandma to either expand her property or get out. Now, zoning laws: That’s another injustice that should be corrected. Proposition 13 has the additional perversity of discouraging repairs and improvements, because “new construction” [0] triggers a reassessment and a huge jump in property taxes. However, it’s a small step between letting grandma fix her house, and letting her rich developer son replace her house with a 4-story apartment building, pocketing the difference between the market rate rents and the low 1975 property tax, and starving the school district of funds. If we don’t want to kick out fixed-income people, then we should simply tie the reassessment to the person’s ability to pay the higher tax. [0] https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/newconstruction.html https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/newconstruction.html