Re:High property taxes are good
by xhxhsjjsjsnz on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @01:24PM
(#32169126)
It’s not just empty fields. It’s also empty buildings. A grocery store sized unit sat vacant in my San Francisco neighborhood for over a decade. Cheap property tax due to Prop 13. Owners wanted to wait for the “right offer” to develop it.
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Many of the abandoned houses in Detroit are owned by speculators who will do nothing with it but wait for land prices to increase.
Re:High property taxes are good
by sudden_dystopia on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @02:05PM
(#32169797)
And that’s worse than them just being abandoned how? Nobody else wanted them, nearly anybody could have bought dilapidated houses in poverty stricken neighborhoods extremely cheaply.
They are still abandoned. They are instead now owned by people that have the means, but no intention of making them better.
It has been shown that LVT reduces blight: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
Re:High property taxes are good
by InitialLastName on Wednesday July 20, 2022 @03:10PM
(#32170703)
> It has been shown that LVT reduces blight
Did you mean to post a different source? The one you posted doesn't "show" anything, equivocates on whether LVT actually reduces blight in the few instances where it's been practiced, and makes meaningful suggestions for solutions other than LVT that it indicates have been shown IN PRACTICE to reduce blight (e.g. a land bank).
On the other hand, many of the vacants in Philadelphia are vacant because the owner has fled because the back taxes are more than the building is worth.
Many of the houses abandoned in Detroit were abandoned (and often torched) due to the ridiculously high property taxes and lack of value returned by the city for those taxes.
It's hard to justify telling land owners to pay high property taxes when the city delivered the highest crime rates and worst performing schools in the nation in exchange for those tax dollars.