8 ms·

I have suggested this before, and I'll suggest this again. The whole problem could be solved if we gave people the choice of voting where they work rather than

• rjmunro 7y ago
  The "City Of London" (a small part of central London) has something like this. They have a resident population of <10,000 people, but somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people commute there for work. Companies get to nominate some of their workforce as voters for the council (called "The Corporation Of London"). For historical reasons ("The City" is much older than the UK itself), things are much more complicated than simply "People who work there get to vote", so I'm not sure it's a very comparable situation. The best explanation I've found is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
• markbnj 7y ago
  > Cities do not want apartments because that doesn't generate revenue The property owners still pay tax on it don't they? I'm sure it is less lucrative per square foot than commercial development, but I assume it is still better than the revenue from the closed furniture store and parking lot, and after all you need people to patronize businesses.
  • i_am_proteus 7y ago
    Perhaps it's something to do with how California has lower property taxes (partially due to Prop. 13) and higher income taxes-- but those income taxes go to Sacramento, not to municipalities. In other parts of the country, municipal treasuries grow as volume and prices of residential units grow.
    • option 7y ago
      California does not have low property taxes. Tax = rate * assessed_value. assessed_value is huge if you purchased during last 7 years and goes up 2% every year
      • almost_usual 7y ago
        Purchased in the last 7 years is pretty recent. Most home owners bought 15+ years ago. If you're buying within the last decade you're probably paying a transplant premium.
        • mktmkr 7y ago
          From 1985 to 2008 the median tenure of a family in a home was 6 years. This figure only started going up in recent years, due to housing crisis. Americans have traditionally expected to move house 8-9 times in their adult life. It is certainly not true that "most" people have tenure of 15 years or more. That is the 90th percentile tenure.
          • wahern 7y ago
            AFAICT those are the national figures from a National Association of Realtors (NAR) report. I can't find figures for California. EDIT: The closest I could find was an ambiguous stat in a CNN article, https://money.cnn.com/2017/04/27/real_estate/home-prices-sellers-market/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/04/27/real_estate/home-prices-sel..., which cites an average of a little over 4 years (2000-20007) that might be for San Jose. However, there's wording that suggests such figures are computed from the tenure of sellers, not across all homeowners, in which case the statistic seem useless (imagine one guy selling every two years and nobody else--that would be a 2-year tenture average but in fact nobody but him is moving). Would nice if the NAR report was freely available.
• bobthepanda 7y ago
  I don't know if this would work as well as you might think it does. 1. People don't necessarily want to live immediately next door to where they work. Maybe someone who works in Mountain View wants to live in Palo Alto, but this doesn't help them. 2. A lot of highways bulldozing inner cities were stopped by residents protesting. Under your proposal office workers could just vote in a highway that gets them from A to B quickly while screwing over everyone who lives next to it. I don't know that going back to this model is a good idea. 3. Mixed use housing does not really 'solve' traffic in that people don't actually live close to work even when it is available. Especially if you consider multiple income households. Tokyo is pretty much all mixed use and still people suffer from long commutes.
  • opportune 7y ago
    To address 1, I think many of the municipalities between at least Palo Alto and Sunnyvale should be consolidated (and give Santa Clara to San Jose).
    • Redoubts 7y ago
      Honestly, the Bay Area shouldn't have municipalities smaller than counties.
      • jkking 7y ago
        This is kind of like what New York did in the 1800s by consolidating all the towns around it into a giant metropolis. And that's clearly what many people wish the Bay Area were today - a giant megalopolis from San Jose to Petaluma. The problem with that is that while it would be a great idea for getting one's way on a given issue, there are a lot of people that don't want to live in that kind of place, and are fighting to maintain their towns as the small towns they want them to be.
        • deleted 7y ago
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      • 7y ago
• mwsfc 7y ago
  Assuming this would be mainly applicable to non property owners? Can't see why any property owner would take that offer. <edit> missing word
• markdown 7y ago
  > Cities do not want apartments because that doesn't generate revenue Solved: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/land-value-tax.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/land-value-tax.asp
  • mktmkr 7y ago
    I think everyone agrees that if it were practical to amend the California tax system then we would just do that.
    • DrScump 7y ago
      Either the Legislature or an initiative petition drive could put whatever property tax changes you like onto the ballot. Then, you just need a simple majority vote. That's what Proposition 13 was in the first place. For example, you could exclude commercial property from Prop 13 protections altogether.
      • mktmkr 7y ago
        Yes, there is already a "split roll" initiative on the 2020 ballot. But I guess my point is tautological: those things which are not impossible are being attempted; most of the things are considered impossible.
  • kuang_eleven 7y ago
    Land value tax does not solve this issue. The vast, vast majority of property value in the impacted areas of California is land value, nothing would change.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • markdown 7y ago
      Are you sure you understand land value taxes? If land is taxed based on value, many homeowners would be forced to sell or replace their houses with apartment blocks that can earn enough revenue to pay the land value taxes.
• cwp 7y ago
  I'd rather see the repeal of Prop 13: • more municipal revenue means better schools and infrastructure • better schools and infrastructure would support more development • higher property taxes would remove the incentive to hang on to property forever making it easier to buy and develop property • removing the disincentive to sell property also reduces the NIMBY imperative, since home owner can move to another area if they don't like how their neighborhood is developing It's not a silver bullet; we'd still have to tackle zoning issues, remaining (and still powerful) NIMBYs, and the everyone-has-a-veto problem, but it's a good start.
  • wahern 7y ago
    Expenditures correlate very poorly with school performance. The evidence seems quite overwhelming. Which isn't to say funding doesn't matter. Just that it's clear that "investing in our children" through school funding was a dead-end, sort of like expecting increased traffic light expenditures to improve school performance. The primary determinants are economic and sociologic factors in the home. We need decent schools just like we need decent water & sewage, but we're long past the point where such civic infrastructure is capable of transforming our society. Focusing on these things as agents of change is counter-productive if not destructive.
    • cwp 7y ago
      I'd settle for the same performance without constant hysterical fundraising by the PTA, parents being asked to buy and donate basic classroom supplies and teachers buying stuff out of their own pockets just to be able to do their job. But really, I just mean "neighborhoods more friendly to kids and parents." School quality is a big part of that, but it's also a matter of finding a good school near your home, public spaces where kids can play etc. SF isn't completely devoid of that stuff, but there's a reason new parents move out to the suburbs. The point is that if we want higher density we need more homes, but we also need more of all the other stuff that people want and need nearby.
      • wahern 7y ago
        When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s (Illinois, Florida, Alabama) I remember teachers buying supplies out of their own pocket. I suspect it's a perennial issue. Expenditure increases usually go straight to salaries--ideally to teachers but these days increasingly to administrative staff. Living in California and observing (but soon to be participant) in how parent participation works here it seems to me, pretense and motivations notwithstanding, that the sociologic function is really about keeping parents engaged with their children's school. Private schools are even worse in this regard, both the cheaper Catholic ones and the expensive ones drowning in cash. My point is that we should stop looking to these things as agents of change. Among other things, it causes us to cyclically attempt to disrupt and revolutionize the system, when what such systems need most are stability and consistency. But education in particular sits at this wierd nexus of public policy where everybody thinks they're an expert, everybody has direct experience with the system, everybody thinks it can do more than it can, and it's a politically neutral subject. And for all our supposed expertise and concern, we invariably have the same ideas--more money, more accountability, etc. Given what we know empirically, the feverish focus seems very counter productive.
• Terr_ 7y ago
  Hrm, but then how does someone vote about stuff that directly impacts where they live? Maybe if people would get one vote in each area, or a double-vote if both were the same place...
• gok 7y ago
  > Cities do not want apartments because that doesn't generate revenue Apartments absolutely generate property tax revenue.
  • BurningFrog 7y ago
    Under Prop 13, less than they cost.
• NonEUCitizen 7y ago
  How about putting this ("let workers vote") to the ballot? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition