4 ms·

Problem being, a lot of people would get absolutely screwed by that, and end up losing their home. There needs to be a way to fix that, without going back to th

by s73ver 9y ago

Problem being, a lot of people would get absolutely screwed by that, and end up losing their home. There needs to be a way to fix that, without going back to the original problem Prop 13 was intended to fix, which was people being unable to afford the property tax on homes that they had been living in forever.

true_religion 9y ago
Why wouldn't phasing it out across 10 to 15 year period to mitigate the effects, not take care of the bulk of the problem? If we'd begun a phase out in 2000, during the height of the tech boom, then by now Prop 13 would be gone and the housing situation would be much different.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Problem being, a lot of people would get absolutely screwed by that, and end up losing their home. Would there be many? Certainly, there were some cases pre-prop 13, but prop 13 wasn't narrowly focussed on protecting homeowners. Those were exploited as pretext, they weren't the motivation. And you could make it protect homeowners while fixing the local government incentives by providing a refundable state income tax credit for 100% of the property tax due to assessed value increases beyond the existing Prop 13 limits. You could do this without or without, modifying the 1% fixed rate. If you don't want that big of a subsidy, you could just allow homeowners to defer without penalty the excess amount until transfer of the property. Still stops people from being priced out of their homes.
- getemback 9y ago
  In retrospect, even the pretext was bunk. It turns out that turfing old people out of their giant, valuable houses is a benefit rather than a problem. Today, thanks to Prop 13, Boomers are massively over-housed.
ericd 9y ago
You can phase it in over time, and you can give a property tax exemption to the elderly. The current structure is a large windfall for a lot of people that it wasn't meant to be a windfall for.
thephyber 9y ago
It's fine to examine the negative effects of repeal, but you also have to consider the negative effects of not repealing. Prop13 is a monster that will continue to exacerbate inequality. Families that owned homes in affluent areas pre-1970 will continue to pay artificially suppressed property tax rates in perpetuity, so long as they only transfer the house within their immediate family. In that way, Prop13 is a perverse incentive to suppress real estate transactions, which exacerbates the real estate issues we already have.

by s73ver 9y ago

true_religion 9y ago

Why wouldn't phasing it out across 10 to 15 year period to mitigate the effects, not take care of the bulk of the problem? If we'd begun a phase out in 2000, during the height of the tech boom, then by now Prop 13 would be gone and the housing situation would be much different.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Problem being, a lot of people would get absolutely screwed by that, and end up losing their home. Would there be many? Certainly, there were some cases pre-prop 13, but prop 13 wasn't narrowly focussed on protecting homeowners. Those were exploited as pretext, they weren't the motivation. And you could make it protect homeowners while fixing the local government incentives by providing a refundable state income tax credit for 100% of the property tax due to assessed value increases beyond the existing Prop 13 limits. You could do this without or without, modifying the 1% fixed rate. If you don't want that big of a subsidy, you could just allow homeowners to defer without penalty the excess amount until transfer of the property. Still stops people from being priced out of their homes.

getemback 9y ago
In retrospect, even the pretext was bunk. It turns out that turfing old people out of their giant, valuable houses is a benefit rather than a problem. Today, thanks to Prop 13, Boomers are massively over-housed.

ericd 9y ago

You can phase it in over time, and you can give a property tax exemption to the elderly. The current structure is a large windfall for a lot of people that it wasn't meant to be a windfall for.

thephyber 9y ago

It's fine to examine the negative effects of repeal, but you also have to consider the negative effects of not repealing. Prop13 is a monster that will continue to exacerbate inequality. Families that owned homes in affluent areas pre-1970 will continue to pay artificially suppressed property tax rates in perpetuity, so long as they only transfer the house within their immediate family. In that way, Prop13 is a perverse incentive to suppress real estate transactions, which exacerbates the real estate issues we already have.