Who would want to settle down in an area that is trying to churn you out though?

Sure, the "fuck 'em" attitude has been used by NIMBYs forever. But now we're using it to deprioritise the existing residents that might've sculpted the community. E.g. "Artists who can't the 200% rent increase? Fuck 'em."

Most folks like some sense of stability with their housing. Not everyone's a 20 y/o digital nomad.

If there was a supply of cheaper housing, I'd agree with this wholeheartedly. Part of the problem is that, in a lot of places (SF, NYC, Seattle, etc) you can price folks into homelessness. Sure, no one is entitled to live in a specific area, but for those who built their lives there, have a community, family, it's cruel to tell them "move to Nowheresville, OH so you can afford a roof"

I mean, either you are cruel to home owners who have capital or you are cruel to poor people. I know where my priorities would be. Or we could of course try to remove the cruelty completely by not using a market system to manage a natural monopoly (space in a community). But if you choose cruelty, at least be cruel to those that can choose to suffer as opposed that cannot really escape

> I mean, either you are cruel to home owners who have capital or you are cruel to poor people.

False equivalence. There's no reason you have to be cruel to either.

You can always build more housing or provide financial services to help poorer people buy homes. Or just, you know, lower the cost of homes so property taxes don't have to be astronomical and force older people out of their homes to begin with.

If housing costs and property taxes are so high it forces older people out, I don't see how that somehow benefits poor people anyway. They still can't afford those stupid expensive houses.

If you disincentivise individual ownership of expensive land and buildings, building dense housing becomes more profitable. Also, you can pay for social programs with the tax revenue.

>You can always build more housing or provide financial services to help poorer people buy homes.

At the edge of town? Why shouldn't we build more housing in the city center?

You were just told that your plan will cause people to become homeless and your response is “I’ll worry about them when they’re homeless.” You’re a perfect politician: make plans with no thoughts to unintended consequences even when you’re warned about them.

They won't become homeless. They will have to move after selling and incredibly expensive house. As opposed to those who are homeless but are not receiving any tax benefits for not having a home, they will have capital to rent for a long time and/or buy a new one in a cheap area

I’m sorry you’re so misinformed despite all the comments in this thread and on this post spelling it out for you. I don’t wanna go in circles, everything you’ve said in the above comment has already been debunked by others here.

How would a non market based system work for housing though? How do we decide who gets to live in places like Honolulu or Boulder?

That's the hard question. Once you have a community that decides to so it differently, you can use democratic consensus or voting (partial exampl Vienna, lots of counter-market public housing), but to get there you either need force or political will for places like boulder (think cutting off any subsidies for private home ownership and replacing then with mandates to have public bodies or cooperatives build dense-but nice housing in their own backyard. Corruption management would of course be an issue, but at least in my country construction is famously corrupt even in the private sector...). For Honolulu I don't know...but is that actually an issue?

The point I'm getting at is that some places are much more desirable than others. In a market, it's prices that act as a mechanism for deciding who can live in a limited space. For example, way more people want to live on the beach than there are houses on the beach.

And who are the ones that voted against building that cheaper housing?

On the other hand: if you own property, you could take a loan out in order to turn your single family home into a rent-collecting multi-unit house. That’s what people did all the time before zoning laws, and it’s a reasonable way for a retiree to earn an income.

The problem is the zoning laws: we don’t allow people to let out part of their property, so they’re forced either to attempt to downsize into a non-existent market, or get evicted for not being able to afford their taxes.

Would reverse mortgages be an option?

There's a reasonable and holistic argument to be made for the generalized version of your position, but specifically wanting people to be removed from their homes by forces they can't control under the rationale, "fuck 'em", is counterproductive and - I don't think it's uncalled for to say - immoral. It's important to have a base level of humanity for people, regardless of what side of which broken social dynamic they are lucky or unlucky enough to be on. Choosing not to do so will in fact hurt our chances of fixing systems in most cases, regardless of how righteous it feels.

>you can always choose to live in a cheaper home

Here also - you're oversimplifying. Yes, you can always choose to engage in all manner of frustrating, saddening, and burdensome life changes. But it's unfair to imply it is easy. You may cite the burdens of others as justification for forcing such a change, but it's a complicated, emotional, difficult, subjective argument that you do no justice by abbreviating into hostile quips. You sound like you're sure this group of people you're imagining is the enemy, and not simply equal human beings, some of whom may have voted in a selfish way on some policy that arguably increased the strain of the situation. It's simply not enough to justify your tone. It's unrealistic to attack every individual who does not always act in perfect unselfish harmony with the greater society, especially when such balance is impossible to objectively define. I.e. it is reasonable to expect individuals to make various concessions for society, but it is not reasonable to expect people not to fight as hard as they can to keep their home (even though it may ultimately be that they must lose it).

The main problem is that in America, the tax structure is very much tilted in favor of home-owning at the expense of renters, that collectively, the homeowner class is receiving subsidies from the renter class (and the homeowner class already has greater net worth and everything else).

There are multiple ways to reduce the impact of the problem. All of them would reduce property values and some might displace existing homeowners. All redistribution is painful and surely people will lose out, the same way that savers lose purchasing power to inflation. Nevertheless, I think it is a necessary rebalance of a system that has been favoring owning over renting for too long.

(1) Tax on imputed rent when owning (imputed rent should not be pre-tax)

(2) Land Value Tax

(3) Remove the mortgage interest deduction

#3. Yes, remove it and help simplify personal income tax filings.

Why should one group be immune from change just because they happened to own property in an area first?

> removed from their homes by forces they can't control

A caveat here is that many of these people vote against denser zoning in their neighborhood. So, in a way, the appreciation of their primary home is due to factors that they do control.

"in a way" -- the region in question is northern New Hampshire.

on balance, the housing price appreciation, and therefore tax burden, on "these people" is functionally entirely due to external macroeconomic factors, which you can clearly see on the Zillow Housing price index by typing in "New Hampshire" or any relevant zip code: https://www.zillow.com/home-values/

The average NH home increased $7k-$10k in value per year linearly for the last 10 years!

Then it increased $25k Jan '20 -> Jan '21.

Then it increased *$53k* Jan '21 -> Jan '22.

10 years worth of price appreciation, and therefore tax appreciation, occurred in a 2 year window.

I understand many people have a pet housing policy issue they care about, but trying to attribute this step-function change in tax burden to "New Hampshire zoning laws" and "these people" as opposed to the massive increase in demand caused by Covid urban flight/WFH & relaxed monetary policy is completely unreasonable.

> You can always choose to live in a cheaper home.

So your 90 year old grandpa has been living in a two bedroom apartment on the lower east side for 65 years. When he moved in at age 25, it was considered a crummy but affordable neighborhood, but now it's expensive and desirable. You want a 90 year old to have to move? I agree that maybe a 65 year old couple no longer needs to be in a 3,000 square foot home, but there are a lot of cases that make this complicated.

If Grandpa rents that apartment instead of owning it, he'd if anything stand to benefit (especially if we tax land value specifically and not the building).

My point is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds are not really capable of moving. Moves are a pretty big pain in the ass in your 20s and 30s, but doing the process of finding a new apartment and physically moving are much harder at that age. And then you move to somewhere cheaper because the whole point is you can't afford the city anymore, but now you need to find all new doctors (many 90 year olds have multiple doctors they see regularly), figure out how to see family (perhaps you remained in your old place because your family lived nearby), get to the grocery store (you're 90... you likely can't drive). It's not practical.

> My point is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds are not really capable of moving.

And mine is that a lot of (and maybe most) 90 year olds wouldn't need to move. The ones who would be motivated to move are also largely the ones who are wealthy enough to do so.

Grandfathering until the chickens come to roost hasn't helped the vulnerable either, yet that same party largely consists of individuals proposing that solution to the vulnerable.

It's cruel, but that same cruelty is deemed acceptable towards 'have nots'.

Why does grandpa get to live in a two bedroom apartment in the LES during retirement when so many other people can't afford it despite working for a living?

If he owns, you'd think that he could sell the two bedroom and downgrade to a one bedroom to keep the monthly cost down. Or even a studio. But at some point it's an incredibly desirable, expensive neighborhood and I'm not sure anyone deserves the privilege to live where they want as long as they want.

> other people can't afford it despite working for a living?

He bought the house by working for a living. The "fuck 'em, give me his house" argument isn't convincing me.

Because 90 year old grandpa can't move as easily as us youngins and it's not his fault that the neighborhood gentrified around him. At this point he can't afford to the taxes on a studio either. But anyway, the process of moving is really pretty tough at that age, even the logistics of finding a new apartment and hiring movers. Now, you move out to the suburbs because you can't afford the city anymore, but you don't drive because you are 90, so it isn't so easy to buy groceries anymore. You gotta find a new ophthalmologist, cardiologist and primary care doctor instead of seeing the folks you've been going to for the last 10 years.

Maybe 65 is too young for retirement age, but I certainly feel that there is an age at which old people should start getting special privileges, like the right to not have to move. And the rest of us can wait our turns and hope that we get to take advantage of those privileges some day.

First, grandpa will have to move eventually. 90 year olds in Ukraine got caught up in a war they had nothing to do with and had to move.

Second, if the neighborhood gentrified around grandpa, his house value has gone up - he can sell at a good profit and use the money for his retirement as he wishes.

Third - consider the counterfactual renter who was living in the same place and working just like grandpa, but had to move at the age of 60 because he couldn't afford the rent anymore. Why does grandpa get to stay but the other person, who is a renter with the same life story get forced out of the neighborhood?

Just to be clear, though:

Grandpa has a senior exemption that reduces his property tax, and if he is also low-income he also gets a senior tax freeze that keeps his taxes low enough to pay them. If his health was failing and things were really, really tight money-wise he could apply to not pay his taxes at all and instead put a lien on his property that gets paid when he passes and the kids sell it.

High taxes don't have to be cruel. The real question is - what are they doing with the money? Are you getting a good value from your taxes? I mean, everyone knows that these governments are wasteful. But they are still spending the money on things. It's happening. Do you get any value from that?

I just moved out of Chicago last year. I am not going to claim that Chicago is well run or a model of efficiency. But they have a lot of programs that they spend money on. The library system in Chicago is incredible. It is undeniably world class. Where I live now, youth hockey costs $500 for a session. In Chicago, it was $175 - with better coaches and the random NHL player showing up to show how to do drills and such. Piano lessons cost twice as much. The list goes on. But you know, grandpa is probably not taking piano lessons or playing hockey. So maybe he's not getting the best deal. I don't know.

> 90 year olds in Ukraine got caught up in a war they had nothing to do with and had to move.

I don't think this is a good example of why all grandpas will have to move eventually. We're not in a world war, at least not officially, and certainly not at all points in history.

Would you apply that argument to other property besides land/houses?

For instance suppose when Grandpa was a young man in 1950 he bought a used 1940 Martin D-45 guitar for a little under $400. That's equivalent to around $4800 in today's money.

He's still got that guitar and has kept it in good shape. Vintage D-45s from 1942 and earlier go for insane amounts on the collector market, and he could sell that for over $100k, probably over $150k.

Why should Grandpa have the privilege of owning a vintage 1940 Martin D-45 as long as he wants when so many other people who would like to play a vintage D-45 cannot afford too despite being working musicians?

Should we therefore have a periodic instrument value tax on musical instruments to keep people from keeping their instruments too long? Grandpa can sell the vintage D-45 and use a fraction of the proceeds to buy a new acoustic guitar or even hire a luthier to build him a custom guitar so its not like having to give up his 1940 D-45 would keep him from having a guitar.

> I'm not sure anyone deserves the privilege to live where they want as long as they want.

You'll grow older and possibly understand. There are things that must be experienced, they can't be learned in any other way.

Great! I'd like to experience living until old age and owning a tax advantaged two bedroom in Manhattan that has appreciated wildly through no effort of my own. Where do I sign up?

//Those of us who can't afford property will shed no tears.

Move somewhere cheaper.

Southern NH here and I would be interested to see if NH's eye-watering property taxes (when you only have one lever, it gets used a lot) have a similar effect as Chicago. Personally, being somewhat involved in city politics, while I appreciate your take, it does mean pricing people out of their forever homes when they've done nothing more than retire to a fixed income in the middle of a bubble. I don't have the answer, but I can definitely imagine the fear of the unknown seeing you will not only be forced out of your home but your town and region to find something affordable.

I lived in Nashua. There is zero new construction going on, lotes are very big so there is a lot of wasted space. The result is that housing is too expensive.

> you can always choose to live in a cheaper home

I'm not sure if you've looked around northern New England recently, but there are practically no cheaper homes left.

That's a very callous attitude, especially for people who have put a lot into their property. Being forced out due to taxation is no choice at all.

But the absolute home value shouldn't affect property taxes. It should only be the relative home value. The county takes the entire budget, and divides it by the total of all the home values in the county to determine the basis for assessing taxes.

The problem comes when a given home goes up in value more then their neighbors, or when one neighborhood increases more than other ones.

Alternatively, have them pay for an appraisal and finance the progressive property taxes out of home equity. Upon death, the property is sold and the equity used to pay progressive taxes is repaid.

This prevents the generational wealth transfer of subsidized senior housing tax rates with the benefits going to next of kin, who sells the asset and receives the proceeds.

I disagree.

The local budget shouldn't change much from year to year, but when values go up, they are quick to reassess high on, many times, artificially inflated values. When values go down, then they aren't too quick to reassess accurately downward.

In this situation, you just end up displacing retirees which is not good.

I'm not talking about having special rules for retirees, just saying the politicians feast when home values skyrocket and cities need to have a reasonable balanced approach to be able to have great services and departments for the community, but not try to optimize for their budget.

So many great cities have been destroyed from high property taxes. They jack up prop taxes, then lose families and are left with mostly older citizens, and there's a breaking point and they leave.

Home values plummet along with property taxes. So what they thought might be good for the community ended up being a poor decision.

Also property taxes are not perfectly progressive. Only areas with nice homes have good schools.

So, politicians get voted in, raise property taxes to extort established neighborhoods into selling because they can no longer afford the government's shakedown of their residence, so the corrupt politicians' business associates can purchase the properties and rent them.

> Those of us who can't afford property will shed no tears.

You seem to believe the fallacy that not being able to afford a home is other homeowners fault, and not due to poor government planning (likely by the same politicians you willingly vote for.)

I took their statement differently; rather, that they aren't concerned for the fallout of the Haves at the sacrifice for the HaveNots.

I am uninformed in this game, so this is not a statement by me: However i've been told that one issue is squatters, land being used purely as investment and with low costs you can easily afford to buy land and squat it till a time when you later sell it in the market.

As someone looking to buy land to build a home on, i've noticed quite a lot of property seemingly being used purely for investment. Flipped through the years for profit with no real added value, in an area of the country (PNW) that is very, very expensive due to limited supply. It is very cheap to keep land, tens of dollars a year for 10 acres (the lot size i'm familiar with) iirc.

Inhibiting this behavior seems beneficial.

Though i imagine more interesting (than simply "high") taxes could help more. Ie something like a higher tax on unimproved and uninhabited land. Encourage usage, not squatting.

But.. i don't know anything here. I just have experience looking to buy land, and watching what goes up for sale.

> Encourage usage, not squatting.

Yes agreed, though I do think people conflate things and vilify wrong targets, which sounds a lot like the OP.

E.g. in California it's en vogue to rail against "Prop 13" without considering why it was passed, or how it helps people on fixed incomes remain in their homes. , or more importantly how the financialization of homes has made things bad globally.

Just because it was passed for a good reason does not make it a good policy. Prop 13, whatever the good intentions, is a disaster and has created a modern landed gentry in California.

And the same politicians that those homeowners vote for. And lobby. Especially retirees who have time to do things like endlessly harangue their local councils to implement NIMBYist policies to prevent increasing housing supply in order to drive their housing prices higher. Of course, couched in language like "preserving the historical character of the neighborhood" and "keeping the riff raff out".

I think you are missing something. It's not about blame, that doesn't matter. People are lashing out. It's about anger at the system. It's becoming increasingly obvious that recently a large part of our personal prosperity is based on incumbency. Our government is routinely breaking social contracts which maintain order. That makes people angry at the system, government and their fellow citizens.

> That makes people angry at the system, government and their fellow citizens.

The "system" and governments frequently prefer angry people direct their rage at other citizens instead of them! QED

One can very convincingly make the argument that state and national governments are undemocratic and difficult for individuals or local groups to influence. But on the scale of a county, small town, or city government, that's less the case. Individual voters who have repeatedly NIMBY voted against densification have absolutely caused their own home values to inflate.

Over here in Hanover they've gone from $500k up to $1M, and honestly the 2% tax rate is the only thing that kept prices somewhat in check in the presence of near-zero interest rates.

Strange, around here property taxes are allocated based on proportional value, true, but the total amount collected is set by the township budget.

So if they collected $10m last year, and will collect $10.1m this year, it doesn't matter if the houses have tripled in value, you'll pay roughly the same dollar amount.

This is how they work pretty much anywhere; the locality aims to collect a certain amount in total taxes, and sets a per-$1000 tax rate based on the total value of all taxable property in their jurisdiction.

People think doubling house value doubles property tax, but the bill could go down if double is less than the average increase for the area.

Or, they can simply get a reverse mortgage using the $300K free appreciation they realized.

> Fuck 'em. Progressive taxation.

At least you’re honest about how you want to wield the cudgel.

If the only thing that changes are home prices going up, why wouldn't property taxes(as a percent of home prices) go down? It's not like the city is offering new services because housing prices are rising?

> you can always choose to live in a cheaper home ... Those of us who can't afford property

If there are cheaper homes for these privileged retirees to move into, why don't you buy those homes yourself?

Almost anyone can afford property… provided you’re willing to move.

I’m where I live it costs $40-$50k / acre up to $150k / acre. 30 min away it’s $3-4k / acre.

I personally am opposed to property taxes. I think it basically implies rent of the land. Then again, I’m basically opposed to all taxes except tariffs and perhaps licensing fees.

For instance, you could implement a licensing fee to use the public roads. Or add a tax on import / export of goods across the protected border(s). But beyond that I view all taxes as far too intrusive. Why should my land be assessed? Why should I provide any details to the government so they can tax me? The “government” is infact my “neighbors” and I simply don’t think it’s their business what my assets are.

> I think it basically implies rent of the land.

That's already implied from the existence of land deeds and the enforcement thereof: you're renting a subset of a nation-state's sovereign territory.

Do you expect the government to protect your assets if someone threatens them?

I thought:

a) NH (like CA) didn't revalue land for property tax purposes as long as you continue to own it.

b) NH had a generous homestead exemption based on the median of the area in which you live.

I'd say Fuck the idea of making it cheaper to live forever in the exact house when you could downsize and make the home available for a family.

If the area was underutilized when they bought in cheap, they earned their windfall. I hope they didn't prevent apartment buildings from being built in their area.

Thank you -- this is a more concise version of my thoughts. If your house goes up in value, you just earned likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in the resulting windfall when you sell. Why on earth should I feel bad for you? I understand that communities change when this sort of thing happens, but pushing out the retired couple living in a multi-bedroom apartment for a small family is a healthier thing for the community. You don't want to freeze communities in time, they need to grow and evolve.

Yeesh, lack of empathy much?

Imagine you bought a house and worked diligently for 30 years to pay it off. Now in retirement your cost of living skyrockets, through no fault of your own, such that you can no longer afford to live there in your 70s and 80s. How is that in any way fair or just?

Now imagine the same exact thing but instead of buying a house, the person rented for 30 years (probably would have been forced out of the neighborhood much sooner). Are you still empathizing?

What about the people who couldn't get a loan in the 1940s-70s because of redlining and ended up having to rent for the same amount of time?

All of this "empathy" talk hides real wealth redistribution towards property owners. Just holding on to a piece of property should not increase your share of real productive capital disproportionately.

Isn't your envy/entitlement misplaced, by your own argument "you can always choose to live in a cheaper home".

Low taxes incentivizes a retiree to stay in possible a more spacious home than they need instead of selling to a young family. If you are a retired couple or a single without any large adult children living with you, you're better off with less to maintain.