8 ms·

Millionaires and billionaires are typically NIMBYs, not YIMBYs (although in SF being a millionaire is common enough that this probably isn't totally true)

epistasis 4y ago
Most of the millionaires in SF are homeowners that bought at a tiny tiny fraction of that price, and they tend to be the NIMBYiest of them all, since their wealth comes from rentierism. The YIMBYs who became millionaires through wages are far less sympathetic to continue the housing displacement that creates SF homeowner-millionaires through capitalist exploitation. (At least, it's capitalist if you take a classic Marxist view of capitalism, which groups landowners in with business-owning capitalists. Smith and Ricardo hate landowner rentiers with the same fury as Marx, but don't seem to think of them in the same capitalist class.)
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  Yeah, the property tax structure in California is a very big contributor to the problem, in my estimation. It's certainly not the ONLY factor, but it is absolutely a cancer on the state of California -- a cancer they don't know how to kill, unfortunately.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    One obvious solution would be to eliminate the provision where your property tax is reassessed if you develop the property.
    - DoreenMichele 4y ago
      If someone has a giant tumor taking over their heart, one "obvious" answer is to cut their heart out. Problem solved. I mean, patient killed, but ...details. I don't know the answer. I do know that some of the tax incentives related to real property in California are seriously problematic. How to fix them? I don't know. Tax law is not one of my areas of expertise.
      - jfim 4y ago
        > I do know that some of the tax incentives related to real property in California are seriously problematic. How to fix them? Repeal prop 13, and replace it with property tax deferral, as done in Texas. If an elderly homeowner living in their house cannot (or does not want to) pay their property taxes, they can elect to defer them for as long as they want to, with some interest accruing. The county puts a lien on the property for the amount of tax due. When the owner passes away, moves out of the property, or sells it, the tax lien needs to be paid, which can be done with the proceeds from selling the property.
        DoreenMichele 4y ago
        Thank you. Have an upvote. I don't know if that actually works, but I do know Prop 13 is a big problem and this is the first I recall seeing some meaningful attempt to suggest an alternative that is actually in use somewhere, so has some hope of being not completely nuts.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      That would help to some degree. I think an even better approach is to only assess the land, and reassess the land every single year. Then it doesn't matter at all what you build, and the speculator holding on to a vacant lot, withholding land from productive use, has to pay back to society for what they are taking away from everyone else. Annually assessing property as the combo of structure + land is what most areas do, but assessing just the land is somewhat easier and is less biased. There are enough vacant land sales, in addition to some very simple regression models that come up with straightforward values per square foot of land. Much harder to game, and less sensitive to the extreme and systematic racial bias that pervades real estate valuation, even to this day.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > I think an even better approach is to only assess the land, and reassess the land every single year. If you're only assessing the land, what would change when you reassessed it every year? Is the idea that property taxes will go down during droughts and back up during wetter weather?
        LadyCailin 4y ago
        It’s based roughly on the price of the market value of the land. Land in the middle of nowhere by a radioactive dump is not worth much, vs land in the city center. It has nothing to do with agricultural productivity.
        epistasis 4y ago
        That's a good question, and could get philosophical: what is value? The tax would be based on the market value, how much the land could be exchanged for. But where does that come from? There's sort of two ways of looking at, in my understanding (which may not be fully complete): how much can the land produce, and what is the mismatch between supply of a location and demand of a location. The first way is that the value comes from what you can do with the land economically, what economic opportunities does that piece of land afford people? So take plot of land zoned for a office anywhere in Pals Alto and compare it to a plot for offices, in St. Louis. The values are going to be immeasurably different, because there are economic opportunities in Palo Alto that simple don't exist in St. Louis, and being physically present in Palo Alto affords connections and value, at least according to what people are willing to pay for access to that land. This "land rent" is the same whether you're bringing in gigantic government contracts as Palantir, or if you are selling insurance in offices on University Avenue, but the prices are generally set by the greatest opportunity. Secondly, looking at plots of land for single family homes in Palo Alto and St. Louis, the big difference in the value of the land, millions of dollars, largely comes from the mismatch in supply. Many people in Palo Alto are raking in the gigantic economic opportunities of building software companies on the network of highly specialized labor and capital that exists in Silicon Valley--and they need to live nearby. And there's not enough land to go around, so prices increase until the poorest have been kicked out and are set at the price of that least wealthy wealthy person. In St. Louis, the same number of wealthy people wouldn't have that impact becuase there's enough land to go around to them and more. The idea of a land value tax is that it make more land available by encouraging far more productive use of that land. The person hoarding a vacant lot has zero carrying costs essentially under a typical property tax, so while land prices are rising, they have very little incentive to develop it. If they wait another five years, they might be allowed to build an even larger structure for even more profit, and in any case the land gains in value provide little incentive to sell. And unlike commodities, where the cure to high prices is high prices, they aren't making more land. It's finite and limited. So high prices do not result in more land production. Instead, we need to set up the economic system to that as land prices rise, each bit of land itself becomes more productive: it must be put to better use. Traditional property taxes disincentivize increasing the productivity of the land. But a land tax shifts the property speculation equation: it's never profitable to hold onto land that is less productive than it could be, on the thought that it will result in a windfall of future money. Or rather, it puts a high price on that speculation that matches the amount of value that the land speculator is taking away from society.
flomo 4y ago
NIMBYs in their own backyard, not necessarily your backyard. Marc Andreessen for example. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andreessens-opposition-housing-project-nimby/671061/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...
- dominotw 4y ago
  YIYBY, Yes in your backyard.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

epistasis 4y ago

Most of the millionaires in SF are homeowners that bought at a tiny tiny fraction of that price, and they tend to be the NIMBYiest of them all, since their wealth comes from rentierism. The YIMBYs who became millionaires through wages are far less sympathetic to continue the housing displacement that creates SF homeowner-millionaires through capitalist exploitation. (At least, it's capitalist if you take a classic Marxist view of capitalism, which groups landowners in with business-owning capitalists. Smith and Ricardo hate landowner rentiers with the same fury as Marx, but don't seem to think of them in the same capitalist class.)

DoreenMichele 4y ago
Yeah, the property tax structure in California is a very big contributor to the problem, in my estimation. It's certainly not the ONLY factor, but it is absolutely a cancer on the state of California -- a cancer they don't know how to kill, unfortunately.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  One obvious solution would be to eliminate the provision where your property tax is reassessed if you develop the property.
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    If someone has a giant tumor taking over their heart, one "obvious" answer is to cut their heart out. Problem solved. I mean, patient killed, but ...details. I don't know the answer. I do know that some of the tax incentives related to real property in California are seriously problematic. How to fix them? I don't know. Tax law is not one of my areas of expertise.
    - jfim 4y ago
      > I do know that some of the tax incentives related to real property in California are seriously problematic. How to fix them? Repeal prop 13, and replace it with property tax deferral, as done in Texas. If an elderly homeowner living in their house cannot (or does not want to) pay their property taxes, they can elect to defer them for as long as they want to, with some interest accruing. The county puts a lien on the property for the amount of tax due. When the owner passes away, moves out of the property, or sells it, the tax lien needs to be paid, which can be done with the proceeds from selling the property.
      - DoreenMichele 4y ago
        Thank you. Have an upvote. I don't know if that actually works, but I do know Prop 13 is a big problem and this is the first I recall seeing some meaningful attempt to suggest an alternative that is actually in use somewhere, so has some hope of being not completely nuts.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    That would help to some degree. I think an even better approach is to only assess the land, and reassess the land every single year. Then it doesn't matter at all what you build, and the speculator holding on to a vacant lot, withholding land from productive use, has to pay back to society for what they are taking away from everyone else. Annually assessing property as the combo of structure + land is what most areas do, but assessing just the land is somewhat easier and is less biased. There are enough vacant land sales, in addition to some very simple regression models that come up with straightforward values per square foot of land. Much harder to game, and less sensitive to the extreme and systematic racial bias that pervades real estate valuation, even to this day.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > I think an even better approach is to only assess the land, and reassess the land every single year. If you're only assessing the land, what would change when you reassessed it every year? Is the idea that property taxes will go down during droughts and back up during wetter weather?
      - LadyCailin 4y ago
        It’s based roughly on the price of the market value of the land. Land in the middle of nowhere by a radioactive dump is not worth much, vs land in the city center. It has nothing to do with agricultural productivity.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        That's a good question, and could get philosophical: what is value? The tax would be based on the market value, how much the land could be exchanged for. But where does that come from? There's sort of two ways of looking at, in my understanding (which may not be fully complete): how much can the land produce, and what is the mismatch between supply of a location and demand of a location. The first way is that the value comes from what you can do with the land economically, what economic opportunities does that piece of land afford people? So take plot of land zoned for a office anywhere in Pals Alto and compare it to a plot for offices, in St. Louis. The values are going to be immeasurably different, because there are economic opportunities in Palo Alto that simple don't exist in St. Louis, and being physically present in Palo Alto affords connections and value, at least according to what people are willing to pay for access to that land. This "land rent" is the same whether you're bringing in gigantic government contracts as Palantir, or if you are selling insurance in offices on University Avenue, but the prices are generally set by the greatest opportunity. Secondly, looking at plots of land for single family homes in Palo Alto and St. Louis, the big difference in the value of the land, millions of dollars, largely comes from the mismatch in supply. Many people in Palo Alto are raking in the gigantic economic opportunities of building software companies on the network of highly specialized labor and capital that exists in Silicon Valley--and they need to live nearby. And there's not enough land to go around, so prices increase until the poorest have been kicked out and are set at the price of that least wealthy wealthy person. In St. Louis, the same number of wealthy people wouldn't have that impact becuase there's enough land to go around to them and more. The idea of a land value tax is that it make more land available by encouraging far more productive use of that land. The person hoarding a vacant lot has zero carrying costs essentially under a typical property tax, so while land prices are rising, they have very little incentive to develop it. If they wait another five years, they might be allowed to build an even larger structure for even more profit, and in any case the land gains in value provide little incentive to sell. And unlike commodities, where the cure to high prices is high prices, they aren't making more land. It's finite and limited. So high prices do not result in more land production. Instead, we need to set up the economic system to that as land prices rise, each bit of land itself becomes more productive: it must be put to better use. Traditional property taxes disincentivize increasing the productivity of the land. But a land tax shifts the property speculation equation: it's never profitable to hold onto land that is less productive than it could be, on the thought that it will result in a windfall of future money. Or rather, it puts a high price on that speculation that matches the amount of value that the land speculator is taking away from society.

flomo 4y ago

NIMBYs in their own backyard, not necessarily your backyard. Marc Andreessen for example. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andreessens-opposition-housing-project-nimby/671061/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...

dominotw 4y ago
YIYBY, Yes in your backyard.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]