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> It’s a policy perfectly designed to entrench the advantages of whoever got here first, and it’s been untouched for nearly fifty years. I don’t live in Califo

> It’s a policy perfectly designed to entrench the advantages of whoever got here first, and it’s been untouched for nearly fifty years. I don’t live in California, but my state has a similar policy where property tax increases are capped. As far as it was explained to me, this isn’t designed as a finders-keepers law, the way it’s framed here. It’s designed to allow people to age in-place. So those who move to an area don’t end up priced out of their own neighborhoods due to excessive property tax increases. There is an old lady who lives down the street from me, she’s probably in her 80s or 90s. She’s always outside slowly picking up the small branches that fall from her trees. She’s been in the house so long that Zillow doesn’t have a record of it. Had property taxes risen unchecked, she would likely have been forced out of the home she lived in for decades. People without a house will shake their fists at these policies, but if they didn’t exist, fists would be shaken to fight against the problem these policies looked to solve. Not to mention, they still benefit new homeowners today. I just bought a home a few years ago. It gives me some peace of mind knowing that my property taxes won’t randomly double sometime in the future. I spent 16 years renting, and moved almost every year when they tried to raise my rent. Maybe it’s the rental market that’s broken, not the model for capping property taxes.

mslate 8mo ago
How it is framed and what the outcomes are are two different things entirely.
- al_borland 8mo ago
  The outcome depends on the perspective of the person being talked about. For the people looking to buy a home, do they really want to buy a home where property taxes can be raised without a limit? One of the benefits to home ownership is locking in housing expenses. A home becomes a lot less appealing when property taxes go unchecked.
  - mslate 8mo ago
    It is interesting how you raise that yardstick on housing and not on income tax or sales tax. Frozen property tax assessments benefit homeowners who are already rich, and disproportionately benefit the literal richest. It is not entirely clear at all whether you’ve read the article
    - al_borland 8mo ago
      You’re assuming all homeowners are rich. The whole point of capping property taxes increases is to not price normal people out of their homes. Home prices in California went up a lot over the past several decades. It is possible that someone is “rich” when it comes to net worth, because their home appreciated in value a lot, but that doesn’t help cash flow, which is what would be required to pay the property taxes. Because their home went up in value, should they be expected to sell the house, just to pay the taxes, and get pushed back to a rental? That sounds rather dystopian. I’m all for rent control. If home owners can lock in rates, so should renters. We should encourage long-term stable rentals, instead of forcing people to move constantly. I would think landlords would want long-term stable renters, but my experience doesn’t align with that (except for one place). The sales tax is high, but it’s not so far off other states that it looks egregious. Income tax is only mentioned once in the article and it says it’s progressive, which is what the author seems to want. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take issue with there? I rose an issue with the property taxes, because I think there is another side to the coin that is important.
      - Suppafly 8mo ago
        >Because their home went up in value, should they be expected to sell the house, just to pay the taxes, and get pushed back to a rental? Not that it's always necessarily ideal, but presumably they could sell the house and buy one in a cheaper community, that's sorta the natural flow of neighborhoods. People buy into a neighborhood and raise their families and then sell to new families after their kids move out and then they move on to smaller retirement sized homes.
        mslate 8mo ago
marssaxman 8mo ago
Here in Washington, we solve that problem with a property tax exemption for senior citizens.

mslate 8mo ago

How it is framed and what the outcomes are are two different things entirely.

al_borland 8mo ago
The outcome depends on the perspective of the person being talked about. For the people looking to buy a home, do they really want to buy a home where property taxes can be raised without a limit? One of the benefits to home ownership is locking in housing expenses. A home becomes a lot less appealing when property taxes go unchecked.
- mslate 8mo ago
  It is interesting how you raise that yardstick on housing and not on income tax or sales tax. Frozen property tax assessments benefit homeowners who are already rich, and disproportionately benefit the literal richest. It is not entirely clear at all whether you’ve read the article
  - al_borland 8mo ago
    You’re assuming all homeowners are rich. The whole point of capping property taxes increases is to not price normal people out of their homes. Home prices in California went up a lot over the past several decades. It is possible that someone is “rich” when it comes to net worth, because their home appreciated in value a lot, but that doesn’t help cash flow, which is what would be required to pay the property taxes. Because their home went up in value, should they be expected to sell the house, just to pay the taxes, and get pushed back to a rental? That sounds rather dystopian. I’m all for rent control. If home owners can lock in rates, so should renters. We should encourage long-term stable rentals, instead of forcing people to move constantly. I would think landlords would want long-term stable renters, but my experience doesn’t align with that (except for one place). The sales tax is high, but it’s not so far off other states that it looks egregious. Income tax is only mentioned once in the article and it says it’s progressive, which is what the author seems to want. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take issue with there? I rose an issue with the property taxes, because I think there is another side to the coin that is important.
    - Suppafly 8mo ago
      >Because their home went up in value, should they be expected to sell the house, just to pay the taxes, and get pushed back to a rental? Not that it's always necessarily ideal, but presumably they could sell the house and buy one in a cheaper community, that's sorta the natural flow of neighborhoods. People buy into a neighborhood and raise their families and then sell to new families after their kids move out and then they move on to smaller retirement sized homes.
      - mslate 8mo ago

marssaxman 8mo ago

Here in Washington, we solve that problem with a property tax exemption for senior citizens.