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A comment on Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a new home in most cities. Parent comment

Re:Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a new home i... by Terr_ on Saturday November 11, 2023 @03:46AM (#38228584)
(Not parent poster) Suburbs generally need more money for their sprawling infrastructure than they can supply with tax revenue from the suburbs.

This means that they exist because they're being subsidized by revenue collected from elsewhere, such as from cities.

Whether this is fair or exploitative depends on how you figure the math for "it's being collected from people who live in the suburbs and just happen to work in the city."

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a new home i... by Always_Anon on Saturday November 11, 2023 @04:23PM (#38234680)
That's not true for Texas. In Texas, the entire costs of suburbs are paid for in property taxes and utility district fees and bonds. Texas is one of the few states where the majority of taxes collected by the state are property taxes. Or so I was told by a coworker living in Texas when I brought this up.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a new home i... by Terr_ on Saturday November 11, 2023 @09:57PM (#38236817)
> In Texas, the entire costs of suburbs are paid for in property taxes and utility district fees and bonds.

The question is how long they can keep taking out more and more debt against the promise of never-ending growth and income from one-time development sales. The answer probably isn't "forever".

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/11/21/choose-your-f...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a new home i... by Always_Anon on Sunday November 12, 2023 @01:31AM (#38237870)
This is a predicament everywhere in the US, the suburbs are not alone in this issue of debt financing for... everything...
[ Parent | on HN ]