
On the Unfairness of California Proposition 13 - dmitriy_ko
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/rich-celebrity-landlords-benefit-from-californias-prop-13.html
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gumby
I'm glad there's a chance the commercial exemption may go away. That never
made sense.

The bigger problem is that prop 13 is structured in a way that screws up
neighborhoods. On my street in Palo Alto is a widow in her 90s who can still
afford to stay in her home, which I think is great. There's also an older
couple in a different home who would like to move out of their
largish/multistory home but couldn't afford to pay the rent or property taxes
on a small one-bedroom. As a result there's only one family with kids on the
block.

As for prop 58...well if you are the sort of person who considers inheritance
at all legitimate I'm not sure you have grounds to complain.

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shostack
If it is an older couple and they sold, presumably at a steep profit, why
couldn't they use that for rent?

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gumby
FWIW this is Palo Alto.

Their property taxes (you can look them all up online) are about $1500/year.
Mine are about $2K/month. The young couple across the street pay about
$5K/month in property taxes alone.

Indeed they could sell at a large profit but probably their house is worth
2.5-3M; any small house would cost a lot too -- there isn't much choice so
house prices are compressed. There's very little rental property -- my real
estate friend thinks my house would rent out for at least $25K/month. It's a
large house, but there was an apartment in the paper the other day that rents
for significantly more!

They could move out of Palo Alto of course, but who wants to do that when
you've lived here 40+ years? And the retirement place ("V") next to Stanford
(neighbor is a retired Stanford prof) has a minimum buy in of something like
$3M.

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Fjolsvith
They could retire in Kansas - Taxes on my home are $525 a year. I live in a
3br house with a detached 2 car garage.

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gumby
Perhaps -- some people do move away when they retire. But moving away from
your (surviving) friends and the environment you've become used to (weather,
shops, etc) isn't generally attractive to people late in their life.

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jl2718
This is not anomalous to progressivism in California; it basically defines it.
Rich heirs with massive trust funds, inherited real estate subsidized by tax
advantages, and no income on a need scholarship at Berkeley complaining about
how we need to raise income taxes so the rich can pay their fair share.

