3 ms·

First, in both of your points someone gets fucked. As far as you're concerned, who cares, so long as it's the right group getting fucked. Perhaps the real discu

First, in both of your points someone gets fucked. As far as you're concerned, who cares, so long as it's the right group getting fucked. Perhaps the real discussion is on why you chose to favor one group (new property owners) at the expense of the other (incumbent property owners). Second, you're conflating issues. Being in favor of Prop 13 is not the same as being against new development. These issues are not the same. Truth is, my neighborhood is one of the few seeing a lot of new development... it's one of the green areas on the map and pretty much all of this development is multi-story/high density housing. I don't necessarily oppose this (I would if it were due to government community redevelopment efforts, special handouts, etc). There would probably be more development if the city was managed more like I would like to see it managed. I am absolutely against the vast majority of regulatory constraint on new development.

pm90 8y ago
> First, in both of your points someone gets fucked. As far as you're concerned, who cares, so long as it's the right group getting fucked. Perhaps the real discussion is on why you chose to favor one group (new property owners) at the expense of the other (incumbent property owners). This is a disingenuous characterization of the problem at hand. Its not a question of newcomers getting your single family home from you, its of you selling your home which will likely be redeveloped into higher density housing for a lot more people. And you wouldn't be "fucked": yes you would lose your beautiful single family residence, but more people would be able to afford living in the community in which they are a part of, but can't because of how expensive housing is. On the contrary, by denying newcomers any housing near their workplace, you are fucking up their quality of life immensely: they cannot build equity (prices too high), are forced to commute long distances or are simply excluded from the community because of artificially high home prices, have to pay much more in taxes for services that you use. That is massively fucking a lot of people. This isn't rocket science; it happens all the time in all major cities. Low density gets redeveloped because of changing economic and social conditions. Its how cities evolve. Prop 13 is basically stifling the growth and natural evolution of major cities in all of California, but especially SF.
ubernostrum 8y ago
You have to remember, though, that Proposition 13 has overt racism as part of its history; people like to go on about "tax revolts" and citizens reacting against over-taxation, but it was pushed as a centerpiece of reactionary measures after California's courts refused to allow various attempts at maintaining indirect racial segregation of schools, and ordered redistribution of funding between school districts. Proposition 13, by gutting the property tax (which was the primary source of school funding), was the final end-run around courts which increasingly would not allow vastly unequal schools for children of different races. Today, there's no good argument for it. "I moved here a few years earlier than you did" is not a sound basis for different levels of taxation. If you want to protect elderly owner-occupiers from being priced out of their long-time homes, you can accomplish that goal with other measures.
- sbuttgereit 8y ago
  The original minimum wage laws were born of overt racism. I assume you don't mean to dismantle them with this line of argumentation? Or do you? So far, I have heard that Prop 13 was really about landlords and corporations (different comment in this thread) and now it's about racism. In my neighborhood, disproportionately long term minorities would be effected more under your proposal of dismantling Prop 13 and landlords and corporations don't rent out of charity... they'd raise rents to cover taxes so ultimately renters cover that cost anyway. I wonder what other boogeymen and tropes we're going to trot out to rationalize opposition to Prop 13 rather than get to the heart of the matter. It's very easy to speak out against something and to rally both emotion and self-righteous indignation against someone you oppose... but much harder to convince someone that what you stand for is right. Tell you what; I'll join you in the cry to demolish Prop 13... but only is so far as it means paying for the infrastructural costs that a property tax might be construed to be proper to fund. So we take the operating costs of fire, police, sewer, water, roads... you get the gist, for the year passed and only their existing programs, add an amount the equal to the annual rate of inflation, and the charge me for the coming year my pro rata share of those costs on a square footage basis... which is more reflective of what my household consumes than its market value, arguably you could also put a head count in there, too. If you wanted to expand essential services, do that via automatic existing program expansion/retraction based on changes in population or a vote of the property owners that fund them. If you want to include renters in that vote, fine, but then measures like rent control or other protection of those renters from the financial reality they vote on the property owners is out: no skin in the game, no voice. No? Then tell us really why you want this and really what you stand for.

pm90 8y ago

> First, in both of your points someone gets fucked. As far as you're concerned, who cares, so long as it's the right group getting fucked. Perhaps the real discussion is on why you chose to favor one group (new property owners) at the expense of the other (incumbent property owners). This is a disingenuous characterization of the problem at hand. Its not a question of newcomers getting your single family home from you, its of you selling your home which will likely be redeveloped into higher density housing for a lot more people. And you wouldn't be "fucked": yes you would lose your beautiful single family residence, but more people would be able to afford living in the community in which they are a part of, but can't because of how expensive housing is. On the contrary, by denying newcomers any housing near their workplace, you are fucking up their quality of life immensely: they cannot build equity (prices too high), are forced to commute long distances or are simply excluded from the community because of artificially high home prices, have to pay much more in taxes for services that you use. That is massively fucking a lot of people. This isn't rocket science; it happens all the time in all major cities. Low density gets redeveloped because of changing economic and social conditions. Its how cities evolve. Prop 13 is basically stifling the growth and natural evolution of major cities in all of California, but especially SF.

ubernostrum 8y ago

You have to remember, though, that Proposition 13 has overt racism as part of its history; people like to go on about "tax revolts" and citizens reacting against over-taxation, but it was pushed as a centerpiece of reactionary measures after California's courts refused to allow various attempts at maintaining indirect racial segregation of schools, and ordered redistribution of funding between school districts. Proposition 13, by gutting the property tax (which was the primary source of school funding), was the final end-run around courts which increasingly would not allow vastly unequal schools for children of different races. Today, there's no good argument for it. "I moved here a few years earlier than you did" is not a sound basis for different levels of taxation. If you want to protect elderly owner-occupiers from being priced out of their long-time homes, you can accomplish that goal with other measures.

sbuttgereit 8y ago
The original minimum wage laws were born of overt racism. I assume you don't mean to dismantle them with this line of argumentation? Or do you? So far, I have heard that Prop 13 was really about landlords and corporations (different comment in this thread) and now it's about racism. In my neighborhood, disproportionately long term minorities would be effected more under your proposal of dismantling Prop 13 and landlords and corporations don't rent out of charity... they'd raise rents to cover taxes so ultimately renters cover that cost anyway. I wonder what other boogeymen and tropes we're going to trot out to rationalize opposition to Prop 13 rather than get to the heart of the matter. It's very easy to speak out against something and to rally both emotion and self-righteous indignation against someone you oppose... but much harder to convince someone that what you stand for is right. Tell you what; I'll join you in the cry to demolish Prop 13... but only is so far as it means paying for the infrastructural costs that a property tax might be construed to be proper to fund. So we take the operating costs of fire, police, sewer, water, roads... you get the gist, for the year passed and only their existing programs, add an amount the equal to the annual rate of inflation, and the charge me for the coming year my pro rata share of those costs on a square footage basis... which is more reflective of what my household consumes than its market value, arguably you could also put a head count in there, too. If you wanted to expand essential services, do that via automatic existing program expansion/retraction based on changes in population or a vote of the property owners that fund them. If you want to include renters in that vote, fine, but then measures like rent control or other protection of those renters from the financial reality they vote on the property owners is out: no skin in the game, no voice. No? Then tell us really why you want this and really what you stand for.