Comment by andrewmutz
17 hours ago
Multiple good things would happen without prop 13:
People would move more instead of being locked in to a low effective property tax.
The tax burden would be much fairer: instead of the police and schools being funded by newcomers, everyone would be contributing their fair share to fund the city, instead of the longest tenure residents mooching off the rest of us.
Unproductive use of land would be discouraged. If a tract became highly desirable, it would be expensive to let it sit in an unproductive form
Cities could raise taxes as high as their residents wanted them to be, instead of being limited by the opinions of non-residents. Some people want to have better funded police and schools, and local government would actually be allowed to deliver that. Citizens who didnt want to live in expensive cities could vote with their feet to cheaper towns.
"People would move more instead of being locked in to a low effective property tax." - this just means that older and retired people would get kicked out of stable living situations, driven by property tax assessments which are often driven by real estate market boom/bust cycles. And housing prices would be just as high as with prop 13.
The bad part about prop 13, is that it never should have applied to anything other than primary residences of people. Having it apply to rental & commercial properties is what warps the market.
Cities should be cutting their police budgets - most small towns have nearly 50% of the budgets tied up in police. All while there has been a multi-decade decrease in crime.
Old people seem to be surviving just fine in areas where property tax is based on current market value? It sucks to move, but luckily they have an extremely valuable property to sell
Young people seem to be surviving just fine in areas where the market value is lower. Sucks to not live in the heart of the city but luckily they have their entire lives ahead of them to accumulate the wealth required.
Under Proposition 19, some people can still move without penalty, as long as they're over age 55, and move to a new property located in California.
https://www.ocassessor.gov/tax-saving-programs/savings-senio...