4 ms·

Prop 13 was a direct result of a California court decision. I forget the 1960s case, but the gist of it was it instituted equalization in school budgets out fr

Prop 13 was a direct result of a California court decision. I forget the 1960s case, but the gist of it was it instituted equalization in school budgets out from property taxes in the name of equity. In other words, high property taxes in 1 town were forced to be transfered to the neighboring town with a lower budget, so much so that the transfer had to be make payments by pupil within a $100 band. That was instituted blind to school performance of course. This actually took hold in many states not just California, however CA was the o ly one that forced transfer payments within a $100 band. There are different flavors of this all accross the country Of course, homeowners are not idiots. They dont want their tax dollars wasted. So soon after this case forced these transfer payments, there was a swell of home owners pushing for prop 13. Makes sense. Local taxes to local benefit. If my taxes are going elsewhere, why should i pay more? And so here we are. Almost 50 years later. Prop 13 is here to stay and is the only restraint that communities have against out of control state spending.

treeman79 4y ago
There was also the whole issue of older people being forced out of their homes due to the rising property taxes. Turns out they vote in high numbers.
- rcpt 4y ago
  Lies. Since 1977 (before Prop 13) we've had the California Tax Postponement Program. Low income seniors, the disabled and the blind can defer taxes indefinitely. They have zero pressure from the state to move.
  - seanp2k2 4y ago
    Also, the biggest winners from prop 13 are businesses like Disney: https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/prop-15-california-property-tax-prop-13.html https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/prop-15-california-property-t... Meanwhile, anyone who didn’t buy a house or property for a business 20+ years ago is priced out of the market, so we have tons of low-quality stores and businesses that are insulated from competition. It’s interesting how many free market advocates will throw their values out the window when it benefits them to do so.
    - rcpt 4y ago
      Right. And consumers get none of this benefit. When was the last time you scored cheap gas because of station's property tax?
- seanp2k2 4y ago
  It’s hard to have a ton of sympathy for people paying very little tax on their 7-figure property. Sell it and move anywhere else…but the real pro move is to just rent it out and live somewhere else. We have neighbors in our Silicon Valley suburb who live in RVs in their driveway so they can rent the entire house and still “live” there. Great retirement plan / grift that will never be available to younger generations.
istjohn 4y ago
It's truly incredible the mountains that are moved in politics to ensure poor families attend inferior public schools since Brown v. Board.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "inferior," funding levels have little if anything to do with school quality once basic needs are met: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district
rcpt 4y ago
Serrano v Priest This is the paper https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/NTJ41788814?journalCode=ntj https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/NTJ4178881...
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
> And so here we are. Almost 50 years later. Prop 13 is here to stay and is the only restraint that communities have against out of control state spending Nope, prop 13 (and the resulting income taxes) is somewhere between feudalism and class warfare, transferring money from the young who work to old people who pay nothing and spend their days at city hall making sure nothing ever gets better.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  If you owned your home and someone made it easy for you to rent at high price, wouldn't you do the same? Im a renter, not a homeowner. But I didn't choose to move to SF as a settler when it was a polluted mess of a city with days you couldnt go out, and high crime. I wanted to move to opportunity.. When incomes are high and the city was better (it is not anymore) Id like for prices to go down but I dont blame those that benefitted from just being there. Instead I look at the enablers, there is plenty of blame to go around, and the homeowner is last in that list. Prices are not High due to just prop13. Miami, NY, Boise, Nashville and a bunch of other cities have housing prices that are going for the moon relative to what its been. They have no prop 13 40% of land on 280, between SF and Palo Alto is undeveloped farmland. Cows dont pay property taxes
  - than3 4y ago
    There's a difference, as an individual you wouldn't own a large percentage of the local real estate, just a small part. Investors who buy up 40% of the market, blacklist tenants, and price fix to set a price floor or remove supply by taking rentals off the market. Those are the main issues. The state governments need to re-implement taxes such that deductions and write-offs do not apply beyond a certain number of properties that are not owner occupied. As for prices, Prices are high because the banking sector has not been held to account for their unlawful actions, and politician's can't balance their budget. They have used that to enrich themselves through various frauds, and kickback schemes. The land on 280 has little to no natural water, that's largely why its undeveloped, and job centers are scarce. Property taxes don't work because you inevitably price locals out of homes and setting a maximum on the tax simply ensures local government increases to that max every year. Long term residents are left in the lurch. I have parents who have a home up there and their property tax has increased 2% of the value every year for at least the last 10 years. They are paying almost a full salary ($40,000) to keep the home. That's just in property taxes each year and that is just for a single modest home with both having to continue working just to get by.
seanp2k2 4y ago
Prop 13 also has the great benefit of keeping anyone new out of the neighborhood, as they’ll be paying potentially an order of magnitude higher tax on the same property. Meanwhile, folks living on the edge of poverty already can stay in their 7-figure homes, unable to afford anything locally as everything else has moved on price-wise, so we get underfunded schools surrounded by de-facto millionaires. Businesses benefit even more, just look up what Disney’s Prop13 benefits are like. This is a great idea too, as it ensures that land owners who have owned in a place for decades are untouchable in terms of investment performance due to the massive tax benefit, so they can charge market-rate rent while paying a small fraction of the tax that anyone else trying to do the same today would. /s
- birdyrooster 4y ago
  They mortgage their houses for huge sums and then buy cheaper homes elsewhere and then fill it with multifamily amounts of people who trash the area (bc it wasn’t engineered for this many people) all while blocking it’s redevelopment. This is why San Francisco is a disgusting mess.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
    San Francisco is a disgusting mess because of govt policies that directly incentiviE and subsizide fentanyl outdoor homelessness, and act such programs are magnet for others in the same situation . Renters are not taking dumps in the street. Homeless people are
- tzs 4y ago
  > Prop 13 also has the great benefit of keeping anyone new out of the neighborhood, as they’ll be paying potentially an order of magnitude higher tax on the same property. Prop 13 is around 45 years old, which is much longer than the median homeowner tenure in California. That suggests that new people are moving into neighborhoods.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  But let me play devils advocate here. 50%+ of california decided for this. Have you pondered why? First, are we really talking a massive tax benefit? Prop 13 is about tax increases to be limited ? Is that insane? Or is it maybe housing prices that are insane? Something does not add up. I dont control the price of my home. Why should I pay ever incessant amounts over something I dont control and is effectively, paper gains? But, I'll tell you what does control prices. Whose fault it is that there is no property being built in all the farmland along 280 between SF and Palo alto or Menlo Park.. Sure it looks nice, but its 40% of available land. Just farms. Worse...some of farming is almonds... which take so much (subsidized) water. Again, why? Why are there no municipalities created in those areas? Why is there no competition in the bay area's overpriced land ? Look into who controls the creation of new municipalities. Thats where a key problem for CA.
IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
Found it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest

treeman79 4y ago

There was also the whole issue of older people being forced out of their homes due to the rising property taxes. Turns out they vote in high numbers.

rcpt 4y ago
Lies. Since 1977 (before Prop 13) we've had the California Tax Postponement Program. Low income seniors, the disabled and the blind can defer taxes indefinitely. They have zero pressure from the state to move.
- seanp2k2 4y ago
  Also, the biggest winners from prop 13 are businesses like Disney: https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/prop-15-california-property-tax-prop-13.html https://www.curbed.com/2020/10/prop-15-california-property-t... Meanwhile, anyone who didn’t buy a house or property for a business 20+ years ago is priced out of the market, so we have tons of low-quality stores and businesses that are insulated from competition. It’s interesting how many free market advocates will throw their values out the window when it benefits them to do so.
  - rcpt 4y ago
    Right. And consumers get none of this benefit. When was the last time you scored cheap gas because of station's property tax?
seanp2k2 4y ago
It’s hard to have a ton of sympathy for people paying very little tax on their 7-figure property. Sell it and move anywhere else…but the real pro move is to just rent it out and live somewhere else. We have neighbors in our Silicon Valley suburb who live in RVs in their driveway so they can rent the entire house and still “live” there. Great retirement plan / grift that will never be available to younger generations.

istjohn 4y ago

It's truly incredible the mountains that are moved in politics to ensure poor families attend inferior public schools since Brown v. Board.

HideousKojima 4y ago
Not sure what you mean by "inferior," funding levels have little if anything to do with school quality once basic needs are met: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district

rcpt 4y ago

Serrano v Priest This is the paper https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/NTJ41788814?journalCode=ntj https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/NTJ4178881...

thatfrenchguy 4y ago

> And so here we are. Almost 50 years later. Prop 13 is here to stay and is the only restraint that communities have against out of control state spending Nope, prop 13 (and the resulting income taxes) is somewhere between feudalism and class warfare, transferring money from the young who work to old people who pay nothing and spend their days at city hall making sure nothing ever gets better.

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
If you owned your home and someone made it easy for you to rent at high price, wouldn't you do the same? Im a renter, not a homeowner. But I didn't choose to move to SF as a settler when it was a polluted mess of a city with days you couldnt go out, and high crime. I wanted to move to opportunity.. When incomes are high and the city was better (it is not anymore) Id like for prices to go down but I dont blame those that benefitted from just being there. Instead I look at the enablers, there is plenty of blame to go around, and the homeowner is last in that list. Prices are not High due to just prop13. Miami, NY, Boise, Nashville and a bunch of other cities have housing prices that are going for the moon relative to what its been. They have no prop 13 40% of land on 280, between SF and Palo Alto is undeveloped farmland. Cows dont pay property taxes
- than3 4y ago
  There's a difference, as an individual you wouldn't own a large percentage of the local real estate, just a small part. Investors who buy up 40% of the market, blacklist tenants, and price fix to set a price floor or remove supply by taking rentals off the market. Those are the main issues. The state governments need to re-implement taxes such that deductions and write-offs do not apply beyond a certain number of properties that are not owner occupied. As for prices, Prices are high because the banking sector has not been held to account for their unlawful actions, and politician's can't balance their budget. They have used that to enrich themselves through various frauds, and kickback schemes. The land on 280 has little to no natural water, that's largely why its undeveloped, and job centers are scarce. Property taxes don't work because you inevitably price locals out of homes and setting a maximum on the tax simply ensures local government increases to that max every year. Long term residents are left in the lurch. I have parents who have a home up there and their property tax has increased 2% of the value every year for at least the last 10 years. They are paying almost a full salary ($40,000) to keep the home. That's just in property taxes each year and that is just for a single modest home with both having to continue working just to get by.

seanp2k2 4y ago

Prop 13 also has the great benefit of keeping anyone new out of the neighborhood, as they’ll be paying potentially an order of magnitude higher tax on the same property. Meanwhile, folks living on the edge of poverty already can stay in their 7-figure homes, unable to afford anything locally as everything else has moved on price-wise, so we get underfunded schools surrounded by de-facto millionaires. Businesses benefit even more, just look up what Disney’s Prop13 benefits are like. This is a great idea too, as it ensures that land owners who have owned in a place for decades are untouchable in terms of investment performance due to the massive tax benefit, so they can charge market-rate rent while paying a small fraction of the tax that anyone else trying to do the same today would. /s

birdyrooster 4y ago
They mortgage their houses for huge sums and then buy cheaper homes elsewhere and then fill it with multifamily amounts of people who trash the area (bc it wasn’t engineered for this many people) all while blocking it’s redevelopment. This is why San Francisco is a disgusting mess.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  San Francisco is a disgusting mess because of govt policies that directly incentiviE and subsizide fentanyl outdoor homelessness, and act such programs are magnet for others in the same situation . Renters are not taking dumps in the street. Homeless people are
tzs 4y ago
> Prop 13 also has the great benefit of keeping anyone new out of the neighborhood, as they’ll be paying potentially an order of magnitude higher tax on the same property. Prop 13 is around 45 years old, which is much longer than the median homeowner tenure in California. That suggests that new people are moving into neighborhoods.
IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
But let me play devils advocate here. 50%+ of california decided for this. Have you pondered why? First, are we really talking a massive tax benefit? Prop 13 is about tax increases to be limited ? Is that insane? Or is it maybe housing prices that are insane? Something does not add up. I dont control the price of my home. Why should I pay ever incessant amounts over something I dont control and is effectively, paper gains? But, I'll tell you what does control prices. Whose fault it is that there is no property being built in all the farmland along 280 between SF and Palo alto or Menlo Park.. Sure it looks nice, but its 40% of available land. Just farms. Worse...some of farming is almonds... which take so much (subsidized) water. Again, why? Why are there no municipalities created in those areas? Why is there no competition in the bay area's overpriced land ? Look into who controls the creation of new municipalities. Thats where a key problem for CA.

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago

Found it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest