Actually no, or not the way you mean. This is a legitimate moral trap: the "policy" at hand is construction permitting and land zoning, and those are almost exclusively local laws and regulations set at the city and county level.

Those governments, by design, serve the interests of their local citizens. That is, the population they serve is inherently skewed toward existing property owners. You can't fix this by complaining about money in politics or whatever, that's not why it's happening.

The solution has to be at the broader government level (i.e. in Sacramento in this case), wrenching back some of the control that has traditionally been local in the interests of the broader population and not just, say, Palo Alto residents.

While there's no denying there's a strong bias towards property owners, it doesn't have to be this way. Renters can and should vote to change policies to favor them. SF is 63% renters!

It is unfortunate that the most disenfranchised demographics are the ones least likely to vote/organize.

That's true, but potentially not enough. The fraction of the population that is renting now is still (by definition in the case of a hot market!) much smaller than the fraction of the demographic that wants to move to the area and needs to be served by a just housing policy.

The renters - if they would vote (they typically don't) however have it in there interest to have more development: more places to rent places downward pressure on rent prices and thus limits their costs. Unlike homeowners (who benefit form prop 13), a renter faces the potential of their costs increasing yearly. If the large group that wants to move in can find a a place without having to displace someone else that limits landlords ability to raise rent. Renters now have to take rent increases because if they don't someone else will, but if the renter can respond by moving elsewhere instead...

Of course this assumes renters actually vote. As noted before, most do not. Thus the tyranny of the minority situation.

It sounds like you may have missed one of the GP's points when you're blaming renters for not voting. I'll reiterate it with a specific example, although I am on the east coast.

Lots of people want to live in Cambridge, MA. Cambridge is lovely, walkable, and bursting with jobs. But not everyone who wants to can live in Cambridge, because Cambridge has large areas of inappropriately low density that homeowners fight to preserve.

Many people who work in Cambridge live in Everett. Everett is kinda shitty. It doesn't even have good transit to and from Cambridge.

People who live in Everett and want to live in Cambridge can't vote on Cambridge housing policy. They can only vote in Everett.

Local control of zoning sounds so democratic, but it's a tool of rent-seeking, exclusion, and discrimination.

GP made the claim that 63% of SF is renters. While you are correct that there are those who wish they had a vote who cannot, the power is actually in the hands of current renters if they would vote.

This assumes that the claim that 63% of SF is renters is correct. I don't know the truth of that.

As a renter who has lived in the bay area for 14 years (last 8 in SF), my interests absolutely align with those of the newcomers who want to move into the area or city. I would love for more supply which would lower the rent I pay, and also make it more financially safe for me to purchase property.

72% of renters have rent control and thereby have the primary reason to care removed

That seems unlikely - would love to see a citation.

63% of SF is renters, but are 63% of those eligible to vote in SF renters?

If even a quarter of those people are immigrants, that tips the scales quite a bit.

Btw, European Union lets every resident vote in local (city and town) elections. Only for the parliamentary and presidential elections, you need to be a citizen to vote.

Is that true for residents who are not EU citizens as well? (At least for France I don't think it is)

Yep, I'm English in England, partner is here Hungarian, she can and does vote in local elections.

Hungary is EU tho. What if you're not an EU citizen?

A large portion of those renters have rent control, so they are insulated from the crisis.

At this point I'm strongly in favor of the nuclear option: a state-level proposition to implement uniform pro-density zoning reforms.

It should also include at least a selective repeal of proposition 13 for non-occupant residences and a re-assessment of all such residences to tax those who are using our real estate as a financial instrument rather than a place to live.

I'd also be in favor of an extra tax on out-of-state residences held by non-occupants and on out-of-state non-occupant purchases.

I'd be in favor of this applied federally and being based on amount (percent, not dollar) of property taxes paid on the property even though it would hurt me personally.

Non-residents cannot hold governments accountable (by voting) for how they use the money which allows the towns to side step one of the core principals of democracy (not to mention that non residents don't have as good information on which to evaluate the performance of local government since many local issues will not affect non-residents). I would have no problem taxing people who enable this by having income or vacation properties in towns they don't live and taxing local property owners who vote for the people who do it.

A total repeal of Prop 13.

A complete repeal is politically impossible, but there are two changes that should be made. One, as mentioned above, is to restrict it to owner-occupied residences only. The other is to change the 2% annual increase limit from a limit on the amount of tax assessed to a limit on the amount due in a given year. If the assessed tax exceeds that limit, the locality would receive a lien for the difference, this lien becoming due only when the property is sold.

This accomplishes the original goal of the initiative — to keep fixed-income seniors in their homes — without starving localities of property tax money and disincentivizing them from allowing new housing to be built.

Politically, passing these changes would still be hellishly difficult, particularly the second one, which is not so easy to understand. One way of putting the problem is that Prop. 13 represents a massive transfer of wealth from future California residents to present ones. Of course, the future ones can't vote against it since they don't live here yet.

Personally I think we should just go for the first one, which is why I didn't mention anything else. Proposition 13 limits should be for owner occupied residences only. This would go a long way to fixing the financialization of real estate problem, which is an often under-discussed contributing factor.

You'd get a lot less resistance there. You're not messing with cost of living for owner occupied homes, just second properties, investment properties, and of course all those foreign cash buyers using our real estate as a money laundering vehicle.

As a renter, that would be very painful for me, as my landlord would simply pass the cost of higher property taxes directly to me. (My building isn't subject to rent control.) For buildings subject to rent control, I would expect this would just cause landlords to spend less on improvements to the properties.

If your landlord gets a property tax cut, would they pass on the savings to you? No.

They are leasing you your place at market rate. The market rate is affected by supply / demand of rental units, not landlord costs. The only way they could pass the extra tax onto you is if you are not market rate and there is a law that allows them to do this, or if increasing property taxes on apartment buildings decreases the supply of rental units - an unlikely scenario.

> The only way they could pass the extra tax onto you is if you are not market rate and there is a law that allows them to do this

Not sure what you mean by this: my landlord can raise my rent for whatever reason (or no reason), by any amount they desire.

I can choose whether or not I want to pay it, of course. But I imagine moderate increases to cover at least some (and maybe all?) of the cost of a property tax increase would be swallowed by most renters, given that moving is also a cost, and often a large one.

> If your landlord gets a property tax cut, would they pass on the savings to you? No.

In fact, we have empirical evidence for this. The campaign for Prop. 13 claimed that landlords would pass on the savings, but after it was passed, no corresponding drop in rents was observed.

Rents are set by market supply and demand, not arbitrarily.

They are. The caveat here is that in the long run, the attractiveness of owning rental property is affected by the ROI, which is affected, to some extent, by property tax rates. A case could be made that Prop. 13 has expanded the rental supply by increasing the returns to property owners. So even though rents at any given time are determined by supply and demand, over time there should be some tendency for the system to self-correct.

The question, though, is the magnitude of this effect compared to the other forces acting on supply. I think it's small. The value appreciation being enjoyed by rental property owners greatly outweighs the small increase in property taxes they would pay without Prop. 13.

One of the reasons Prop 13 happened was to go hand in hand with rent control and help offset the negative costs of rent control. (An advantage for the owner and renter). So I think you'd need to get rid of rent control to get rid of Prop 13 for a large group of people and that would be very hard.

Prop 13 preceded rent control in San Francisco and in most (maybe even all) California cities that have rent control.

That's how I heard it. Turns out Berkeley got rent control in 1972 while Prop 13 was passed in 1978. But generally you're right.

It's still my understanding that landlords of multiple units who have tenants in rent control would have a massive problem with the repeal of Prop 13. It's one of the things that go hand in hand with rent control and keep costs low. They would have a strong argument for being unable to maintain their buildings and run a business without Prop 13.

> It's one of the things that go hand in hand with rent control and keep costs low.

Prop 13 doesn't keep total costs low for landlords, it just shifts costs from property taxes to other things.

A number of landlords skimp on maintaining their buildings when they have a number of people on rent control. The buildings become quite dated and unkempt. However Prop 13 does make the business sustainable for those receiving very little rent from tenants of 30+ years.

They should change the 2% limit to change according to the CPI. Interest rates were crazy high in the years when it passed, now that rates are low it's rewarding those who bought when rates were high (and prices were low). Prop 13 just defies all sense

Repeal 13 and lower the property taxes from 1.3% to 0.6%.

Of course, about 80 to 90% of the existing homeowners (in many neighborhoods most people bought they're homes more than 20 years ago, you can verify this for yourself on zillow) won't like that, as they're currently paying about 0.1 to 0.05%! So, it's a pretty hard sell.

This will never happen. If you want to see a single issue unite hard right wing conservatives and far left wing liberals or single handedly bring down a political party, try taking on Prop 13. Just about every homeowner in the state views this as an existential threat and will bring hellfire and damnation down on any politician that so much as mentions repealing Prop 13. Plus, there are so many other options that have a better chance at making an actual impact.

I'm much more in favor of incentivizing people to support positive change than just bringing out the big sticks. How about giving everyone in the neighboorhood a property tax credit if they vote to upzone? Or giving companies big tax breaks if they allow 50% of their workforce to work remotely (tackling both housing and transportation issues)?

That's correct, so I think the only chance we have is phased approach. Not repealing prop 13 as of now but start with excluding new homeowners from it (or at least increase limits on annual reassessments for them (from current no more than 2% a year)).

There is an idea of excluding commercial properties from Prop 13 too (I think they shouldn't have to be covered to begin with, the whole idea of prop 13 was to "keep that old lady in her house when she has retired and cannot keep up with raising expenses").

Also props 58 and 193 allow to inherit Prop 13 tax assessment by children and grandchildren (again against original idea of prop 13 to just help elderly with living in their places when retired) so Prop 13 expanded that way to became multi-generational.

We can consider excluding non-primary residences from it too.

"again against original idea of prop 13 to just help elderly with living in their places when retired"

But if that isn't the case, then wouldn't a home have to be sold to cover the tax increase? So you couldn't keep a home in the family, either.

Is it a declared right to keep a home in the family?

Also why new homeowners not inheriting it are supposed to be paying property taxes in full?

Also in this case if you want to help someone to keep property they cannot afford then maybe tax assessment reduction should be based on new owner's income level and not on a year deceased relatives bought place

If we're against someone being priced out of their home by taxes, wouldn't we also be against homes being priced out of families by taxes too?

Why? I'm totally fine with a measure that helps keep fixed-income residents in their homes when property taxes would otherwise eat them alive. I see no reason why we need to keep that property tax burden affordable when that resident passes away and the property goes to their heirs, who presumably already live somewhere else, paying taxes they can afford. If they can't cover the newly-assessed property tax on their relative's residence, then they should sell it and stay where they are.

Maybe grandfather in existing property owners, but expire it when it sells. At some point the narrative has to flip to the Granny in her 1.5m home paying $1200/yr in taxes vs. the young family next door struggling with kids, student loans, and a $16k/yr property tax bill. Where's the fairness in that?

just propose a means test on prop 13 so they at least have a harder time justifying their opposition to it

this would mean proposing that the law that's supposedly meant to help old people would actually be limited to those old people

If only.

I pay more than 4x what my parents will ever pay in property taxes on their home that is worth more than 4x what mine is.

Prop 13 was, pardon my french, such a dumb fucking proposition.

Unfortunately doing so will just reintroduce the problem it was meant to combat: People being forced out of their homes because of property tax. That's definitely not a desirable thing, either.

Funny you should mention Palo Alto, but here is a direct example of the effects of SB35 wrenching control in just the manner you described:

The Law: https://therealdeal.com/la/2017/10/05/will-new-california-la...

The Effect: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/02/community-reacts-to-d...

I hope that housing gets built. SoCal needs as much housing built as possible, and even with SB35 what is possible is limited. At least NIMBY towns and residents can't permanently block projects anymore, that is a huge improvement (which will reduce development lag & stoppage).

>The solution has to be at the broader government level (i.e. in Sacramento in this case), wrenching back some of the control that has traditionally been local in the interests of the broader population and not just, say, Palo Alto residents.

The current hole was dug by local governments being very involved in telling property owners what they could and couldn't do over many decades.

Why will recursion fix the problem?

The bay area is rich enough and enough of that is tied up in property that if it perceives it needs to buy influence in government in order to keep it's wealth it will probably be able to do so then the problem will be even more entrenched because it will be entrenched at the state level.

> policy makers that serve the hand that feeds them?

More like, California and Federal level policymakers have been too lenient and let town and city level politicians make too much selfish policy that hurts the state and country level economy and progress.

The economic powerhouse areas don't belong only to their current residents. Everyone in the country has a right to strive for wealth and a better life by moving to economically active regions. We shouldn't create a society where your economic class is determined by where you happened to be born.

Slamming the door behind you and looking down on the poors is a common neoliberal philosophy though, its really disconcerting how many people are apt to blame those below them in earnings/stature for being in said situation. No leniency is given, nor help. Very un-Christian, but most of those who claim to be Christian/Catholic do not follow the core teachings of said religion, instead choosing to follow neoliberalism ideology.

Its wretched, but that is the society we live in today! Why haven't you picked yourself up by your bootstraps yet? /s