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Solkanar512 posted:I'm a mostly ignorant lurker here, but I'm curious about something. How does a municipality provide more services and infrastructure without gentrifying the area as well? Stuff like bike lanes or better schools, parks, library branches - stuff that should have been there the entire time. And yeah, that stuff should all be funded at the state level to ensure more equity but it's generally not so what's the proper way to do that in the short term? gentrification isn't really a technical term. it describes a process of displacement which, if it happens fast enough or hard enough, visibly fucks over the poor/middle class in a way that people sharply notice. this is distinct from the slow displacement of the poor/middle class which is just a sort of natural part of how cities exist when people can outbid each other for housing but, with that out of the way, to answer your question - you can't provide better services and infrastructure without making the area more attractive to people with more money. especially not schools, which are the strongest influence on property values. you could put a property tax freeze on targeted homes or neighborhoods so as to prevent people from being priced out of their own homes, or like rent control for renters, but you can't prevent people from seeing rising property values and deciding to cash out if they own property there
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Mar 14, 2020 22:18
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Can we all agree that the way schools are funded in the US is awful?
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Mar 14, 2020 23:01
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Solkanar512 posted:I'm a mostly ignorant lurker here, but I'm curious about something. How does a municipality provide more services and infrastructure without gentrifying the area as well? Stuff like bike lanes or better schools, parks, library branches - stuff that should have been there the entire time. And yeah, that stuff should all be funded at the state level to ensure more equity but it's generally not so what's the proper way to do that in the short term? Best you can do is spread out the improvements. And then bigger picture public housing (and maybe even some form of rent control, though I don't think the way it works in the US usually is great). OddObserver posted:Can we all agree that the way schools are funded in the US is awful? Most Americans are aware of this on some level, that there's a reason why poor families don't just choose to live in better school areas which would then even things out, but because SFH-only zoning is so common, even most people left of center seem to just shrug and accept it. "Yeah, the local government enforces gated communities for schools for some reason, oh well." One of the striking things about moving to Germany is that how rich or poor a neighborhood is, is much, MUCH less obvious almost all the time. Of course there's still some variation, but it's far less drastic, you usually have to actually pay close attention, whereas in most US neighborhoods I would nearly always notice how rich an area is even without thinking about it. And it seems pretty obvious that this is because there isn't any SFH-only zoning, anywhere, so you can always build at least, like, some 'missing middle' type housing that working class people could afford. Cicero fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Mar 15, 2020 |
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Mar 15, 2020 00:05
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Dylan16807 posted:So that basically does boil down to her being very mistaken about her own level of wealth, not realizing that she was pushing up housing prices herself? That's a reasonable assessment, and it's a shame that riding prices all by themselves can screw up a neighborhood even if people actively try to keep the culture the same. "Keeping the culture the same" is on its own a good thing, it's both theoretically and practically a reactionary principal. There are specific circumstances where it can be desirable, generally to protect less privileged or vulnerable communities due to other deficiencies in our society, but it has mostly been used to justify white supremecy over the last century. Change, especially in urban environments, should be a good thing, the problem is when we don't allow the least we'll off to benefit from it.
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Mar 15, 2020 10:22
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While we're still in the throes of the pandemic, the usual suspects and more than a few useful idiots have taken the opportunity to decry density as a catalyst for disease and promote further sprawl and dependency on personal car ownership. There's fortunately been some pushback, but I fear there's far too many people who will accept the argument at face value as it's easily intuited and the (correct) counter-argument requires diving a bit deeper. A nice article on the subject: quote:When a pandemic comes, cities scare the hell out of people. The crush and bustle of the sidewalks and subways feels like a big petri dish. One instinct is to run... This choice rarely turns out well. Don't read the comments.
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Mar 29, 2020 18:36
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Rich people hate good infrastructure though because the only good infrastructure in cities is loads of public transport and theoretically a poor person could use it to come over and be visible in a rich-people neighbourhood or *gasp* even go to school there!
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Mar 29, 2020 22:03
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^^^ OTOH, it helps keep the riff-raff off the roads so that's good Cicero posted:You can't, really. I mean you could avoid improving the areas where poor people live, but for obvious reasons this isn't the greatest idea either.
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Apr 28, 2020 00:29
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mobby_6kl posted:Those property taxes are probably also making gentrification worse in America directly too. I was pretty shocked when I learned my relatives in NJ were paying over 10 grand a year in property taxes. That's nuts and I can see how increasing property prices can drive out someone who otherwise would be able to afford living there. In contrast I got the annual property tax bill a couple of weeks back and it was less than $100. I'm not sure how best to address that beyond being sure that freezing property taxes in any way is a terrible idea that only produces a bunch of old fucks who bought in when things were 50x cheaper and are intolerant of any change in their neighborhoods. Abolish all private land ownership, imho?
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Apr 28, 2020 03:22
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Badger of Basra posted:https://twitter.com/rabonour/status/1237424594526416896?s=20 good to see jane jacobs is still getting work
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Apr 28, 2020 04:12
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Cugel the Clever posted:Aren't property taxes a lagging indicator, though? They're paying a lot in property tax because property values in their area have gone up a lot. yeah this poo poo is what gets me going when I hear "COMMIEFORNIA"
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Apr 28, 2020 04:13
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Is anyone attending the online NPC?
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Apr 29, 2020 17:48
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Cugel the Clever posted:Aren't property taxes a lagging indicator, though? They're paying a lot in property tax because property values in their area have gone up a lot. I'd exempt the primary residence from property taxes altogether. It's pretty weird that the one wealth tax that's somehow acceptable is literally on the only thing that's separating us from being homeless. It'd also have the extra benefit of decoupling tax revenue from real estate prices.
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May 1, 2020 14:24
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mobby_6kl posted:I'd exempt the primary residence from property taxes altogether. It's pretty weird that the one wealth tax that's somehow acceptable is literally on the only thing that's separating us from being homeless. It'd also have the extra benefit of decoupling tax revenue from real estate prices. you'd have to mandate local government unification and revenue sharing, massively centralizing state level power. property taxes exist because they're the one form of taxation localities can reliably institute within their own borders. cities don't and probably can't collect income tax, and sales tax at a local level is pretty unreliable. a property must exist somewhere though, and generally won't be moved. exempting primary residences from property tax would murder thousands of bedroom/suburban cities, which would be a good thing in the long run, but cause some pretty cinematic consequences in the short run Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 14:36 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 14:33
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There also would need to be some alternative mechanism to encourage the adaptation of whatever structure exists on the land to the needs of the broader community. As much as it would be cute that my great grandmother continue to reside in the ranch house she bought 80 years ago, there are real societal costs to her doing so if the number of people who would benefit from living in the area outstrips the number of available homes. Forcing our cities to evolve in a way that treats current residence as absolutely sacrosanct would inflict terrible consequences on everyone, even assuming an enlightened approach to public transit that would allow newcomers easy mobility no matter how far out they're shunted. Removing the property tax would also eliminate one of the huge incentives to replace any existing structure with more units: where the purchaser might have previously decided to bring on more residents to offset the high tax rate on the high value land (assuming the neighborhood doesn't already ban multi-family homes), there's suddenly even less reason for the rich not to build themselves ridiculous mansions in areas people are clamoring to get into. But you're right that rising property taxes are likely to first hurt those least able to adapt to the change and I don't know what to do about that beyond ensuring folks have the means to make a change without discomfort and maybe somehow requiring that the property be redeveloped into more units that will be affordable to those that were displaced.
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May 1, 2020 15:30
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Property is capital. If you have a capital asset that's appreciating in value you should be taxed on it. The problem isn't that housing is a commodity, so much is that it's an investment. The issue isn't that housing is something people buy and sell, but something that we've built our entire political economy around ensuring always goes up. A lot of the psychotic NIMBY reaction to things like apartments are racism or classism, but a lot of it is also the fact that the people snarling at those meetings have invested their life savings in something whose value depends on it being scarce. This isn't some fixed and intractable law of nature either, the fact that housing usually appreciates in value and the fact that people base their personal economic lives around that are both the result of conscious policy decisions.
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May 2, 2020 07:19
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Still Dismal posted:Property is capital. If you have a capital asset that's appreciating in value you should be taxed on it. I'd argue that a primary residence should not be taxed.
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May 2, 2020 13:06
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Nitrousoxide posted:I'd argue that a primary residence should not be taxed. Why should homeowners get a break when renters will be paying the landlords' property tax indirectly in their rents?
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May 2, 2020 14:41
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A limited property tax break that was only for primary residences of people who'd lived there a while (5+ years) and for whom the increased taxes would represent a burden on their current income would be fine. That would eliminate probably 95% of the problem with laws like Prop 13.
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May 2, 2020 14:55
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Nitrousoxide posted:I'd argue that a primary residence should not be taxed. Please make the argument. Those properties use city services and should pay for them.
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May 2, 2020 14:56
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silence_kit posted:Why should homeowners get a break when renters will be paying the landlords' property tax indirectly in their rents? Related my town had to ask for a bond override to pay for a new elementary school last year. The usual debates popped up, why can't we just reinvest in the new old schools, the town must of mismanaged funds, why should kids get anything when I was in school we didn't need X. Day of the election someone goes on facebook live, a realtor and goes on this diatribe that he believes the schools are in disrepair and that we should build new ones. His issue with the bond issue is that renters in town, will not have to bare the cost of the new real estate tax and that why should they benefit. Taking aside the obvious racial and class implications, I asked this guy if he knew how rentals work. I hate this idea that these rental apartments are operating some razor thing margin small business. They will bake the taxes into the cost somewhere. He basically said they won't be taxed as much and I wonder how this guy can actually work in real estate if he doesn't know how any of this works.
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May 2, 2020 14:56
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MickeyFinn posted:Please make the argument. Those properties use city services and should pay for them. People on fixed incomes or even incomes that don't increase with the property prices in their neighborhood will get priced out by increasing property taxes. The money should be raised through income taxes or taxes on commercial or non-primary residence property.
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May 2, 2020 15:01
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Eliminating or even restricting the ability of counties and local municipalities to tax primary residences is a fantastic way to bankrupt those municipalities.
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May 2, 2020 15:01
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Nitrousoxide posted:People on fixed incomes or even incomes that don't increase with the property prices in their neighborhood will get priced out by increasing property taxes. does the commercial non-primary residence property include rental units though? silence_kit's point still stands. If the tax burden is just shifted from homeowners to renters that is not a progressive outcome. To keep it fair you are inevitably going to have to exclude almost all residential property from taxes, which will inevitably create other problems.
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May 2, 2020 15:11
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Also if you shift the tax burden entirely to commercial properties then overnight those properties will close up shop / leave the city or county and that is a great way to impoverish your city. There are better and more effective ways to protect vulnerable residents than to restrict a municipalities ability to tax residences.
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May 2, 2020 15:16
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Also if you shift the tax burden entirely to commercial properties then overnight those properties will close up shop / leave the city or county and that is a great way to impoverish your city. So how do you go about doing it? Honest question, I don’t know.
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May 2, 2020 15:22
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Solkanar512 posted:So how do you go about doing it? Honest question, I don’t know. I don’t know either, but I’ve seen first hand what happened in my own county when property tax increases were tied to inflation and suddenly we cannot afford all of the services that we need. Of course, this disproportionately affects the poor/immigrant communities. I know that my county offers substantial mortgage loan and payment assistance for those who meet the financial criteria. Perhaps some sort of tax forgiveness for those specific residences could also be hashed out? Solaris 2.0 fucked around with this message at 16:02 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 15:33
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Nitrousoxide posted:People on fixed incomes or even incomes that don't increase with the property prices in their neighborhood will get priced out by increasing property taxes. Do you think there are no renters with fixed or low incomes
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May 2, 2020 15:37
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Stop trying to think of prop 13 replacements. Just kill the whole thing. Just don't foreclose homes for property tax liens if somebody lives there. Wait for a sale or property transfer to take the pound of flesh. E: woops thought this was California politics thread.
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May 2, 2020 15:44
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What is wrong with the idea of making property taxes some vanishingly small fraction of a percent (few hundred bucks a year) to pay for the costs of maintaining the cadastre and levy increased income taxes on higher income bands to offset revenue loss? It would shift the burden away from fixed incomes and toward higher earning working individuals. Tax a second home at the long term capital gains rate because it functions the same as any other wealth hoard.
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May 2, 2020 15:48
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Property tax is the closest substitute we have for a wealth tax. I'm not sure replacing it with income tax would have the desired effect.
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May 2, 2020 15:54
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1) It's a massive subsidy to homeownership, which is bad 2) If they sell the house it's still a capital gain 3) Lol renters? Who cares
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May 2, 2020 15:54
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Badger of Basra posted:Do you think there are no renters with fixed or low incomes Exclude rental properties from property taxes insofar as the rental units are being used as people's primary residence. If 50% of the units are being used as primary residences then reduce the landlord's property tax on that property by 50%. Make up the difference with higher income and commercial and non-primary residence property taxes.
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May 2, 2020 15:55
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Hambilderberglar posted:What is wrong with the idea of making property taxes some vanishingly small fraction of a percent (few hundred bucks a year) to pay for the costs of maintaining the cadastre and levy increased income taxes on higher income bands to offset revenue loss? It would shift the burden away from fixed incomes and toward higher earning working individuals. Tax a second home at the long term capital gains rate because it functions the same as any other wealth hoard. Essentially this is what major cities do though.
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May 2, 2020 16:48
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Hambilderberglar posted:What is wrong with the idea of making property taxes some vanishingly small fraction of a percent (few hundred bucks a year) to pay for the costs of maintaining the cadastre and levy increased income taxes on higher income bands to offset revenue loss? It would shift the burden away from fixed incomes and toward higher earning working individuals. Tax a second home at the long term capital gains rate because it functions the same as any other wealth hoard. Why a few hundred bucks a year? Where did that value come from? Maintaining the cadastre is insufficient, isn't it? The city built (and maintains) water pipes, sewage pipes and water lines to nearby that property so that the property can access those services and the owner is using them. The owner should pay for those, too. The roads that go to the house should be paid by the owner. The property tax issue seems like people trying to use a change in property taxes to ameliorate more fundamental problems in the United States. Namely that retirement incomes are inadequate, housing is in shortage (in urban areas, at least), and house prices are also the principle means to wealth generation for the middle class (maybe the poor as well?). I don't think the property taxes are the issue. Property taxes are a way to internalize (to the homeowners) the societal cost of their homeownership, that seems like a good thing to me. That old and poor people get priced out of their homes is a problem because the old and poor have fixed incomes and no where else to go.
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May 2, 2020 17:06
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Nitrousoxide posted:The money should be raised through income taxes localities can't collect income taxes -or- let's continue to gently caress up the american tax system by collecting income taxes on the federal, state, and local (both county and city level? and township level?) level Nitrousoxide posted:or taxes on commercial or non-primary residence property. there are way not enough commercial or second homes to tax to support local government Hambilderberglar posted:What is wrong with the idea of making property taxes some vanishingly small fraction of a percent (few hundred bucks a year) to pay for the costs of maintaining the cadastre in the united states, the primary use of property taxes is to fund education as primary education is entirely handled at the local level. inequitable distribution of residences and property taxes across jurisdictional lines is a strong, perhaps the strongest influence on racial segregation. while this scheme is really awful, it exists because there is no meaningful revenue sharing in the united states (generally, there are always exceptions) between state and sub-state aka local jurisdictions. so tampering with property taxes without some sort of magic scheme to enhance state level control of local decisions will, directly, make education even worse in the united states as poor jurisdictions would lose the ability to fund schools with no adequate compensatory measure in place Hambilderberglar posted:and levy increased income taxes on higher income bands to offset revenue loss? localities do not have the power to collect income taxes. it really doesn't even make sense at the local level, with how fragmented jurisdictional lines are. do you get taxed by the locality where you live? do you get taxed by the locality where you work? what if you work in multiple localities? theoretically the state could enact revenue sharing, but this is a political non-starter in terms of reform (ask local jurisdictions to cede power, see how that goes for you) and it would open up revenue sharing formulas to public debate which would almost certainly continue to entrench inequitable distribution of resources Hambilderberglar posted:Tax a second home at the long term capital gains rate because it functions the same as any other wealth hoard. the problem with second homes is that they tend to be in nice, remote locations. so all these coastal or lake or mountain towns where people retire to would have a nice fat funding boost with nothing to spend it on really. this is more of that inequitable distribution thing Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 17:20 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 17:10
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anyway this entire derail can be put to bed if some of yall google "homestead exemption"
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May 2, 2020 17:11
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Badger of Basra posted:1) It's a massive subsidy to homeownership, which is bad 1. I think there is a big difference between the person on a fixed income and a paid off home that was hoping to age in place and a henry household netting a quarter million. The latter can absorb a tax hike much more easily and should be the class bearing the brunt of the cost of providing services in the public sphere. There’s also not a jurisdiction in the US that does not collect federal income tax which should eliminate jurisdiction shopping and tax arbitrage by playing games with residency status the way state and local taxes allow. Lastly, I personally don’t really care about the degree of ownership or usufruct someone has over their (primary) residence. Having a roof over your head is as close to a fundamental need as there is and it does not sit well with me that someone can be in the circumstances where they cannot afford to pay taxes for what is a basic necessity. 2. That’s true already but the taxation on the gain is waived if the proceeds are used to buy another house. The kind of people benefitting from this the most have large and expensive homes in desirable areas, so they will have income to spare and tax. Or institute a mansion tax for any private residence with its own entrance over a certain size (the entrance so you can avoid someone putting a few locking doors in a McMansion and claiming they’re individual units.) , or extra tax if the sales price is a certain percentage over the average value. Something to shift the burden further toward higher incomes. 3. Renters do not pay property taxes directly? If you are concerned with the costs being passed along require all rents to be itemized and criminalize charging tenants for any of these taxes. E: well this was a useless post since i was ignorant of the revenue sharing situation in the US. Hambilderberglar fucked around with this message at 17:28 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 17:24
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Hambilderberglar posted:E: well this was a useless post since i was ignorant of the revenue sharing situation in the US. honestly a lot of the problems of the united states can be attributed to deliberate governmental fragmentation, which made sense two centuries ago but is now a structural weakness compared to the more modern, centralized federalistic states of europe at the federal level, the united states federal government is very strong in some explicit ways and also completely firewalled out with no power in other ways. for example, the united states military - very strong! and yet, the federal department of education was created in the late 1970s (out of precursor organizations, to be fair) and it has very little power to enforce comprehensive educational standards or equitable funding across schools in the united states. the department of education is largely just a clearinghouse for federally managed loans to individual students for higher education the 10th amendment to the constution basically says "anything not listed here is a power granted to the states". so the states of the united states are REALLY powerful compared to the level of authority that states or state-equvalents have in other federalist systems. like, some american states have their own militaries. the power to define what a city is and what powers it has is a power itself granted to states. so states can determine within their own borders what a city is and can do. in many states, the state government kicks a lot of power down to the local level in a "home rule" clause, meaning that "hey you guys live here, you sort out your own systems of education and utilities and stuff. please meet these standards or we will be mad at you. anyway k thanks byeee". the important thing to remember here is this: -states are allowed to collect income taxes (nothing in the constitution prevents it) -states are allowed to determine what taxes local jurisdictions can collect -states which permit local governments to collect income taxes would be directly undercutting one of their primary sources of revenue so in practice this generally means that states collect income taxes, local governments collect property taxes, and both collect sales taxes in variable proportions. some states engage with revenue sharing, some dont - it's difficult to talk about in anything other than vague terms because every state can kind of do whatever the hell it wants. here's an article that breaks it down a bit https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_cma.pdf tldr school funding in the usa is roughly half local, half state, with a pittance from the federal government. there are a LOT of revenue streams here through so don't make any assumptions here without looking at it in detail e: this article is old but it summarizes the problem well http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may02/vol59/num08/Unequal-School-Funding-in-the-United-States.aspx quote:Funding in Other Countries and because of the baked in preference for "home rule", tightfisted white racists get a lot of voice when it comes to determining school funding policies Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 17:58 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 17:52
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silence_kit posted:Why should homeowners get a break when renters will be paying the landlords' property tax indirectly in their rents? You just give it back to the renters! https://www.revenue.state.mn.us/renters-property-tax-refund
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May 2, 2020 18:21
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If you own property that is increasing in value that you winning, that’s the system working for you, you aren’t a victim. If you can’t afford the property tax take in renters, thereby increasing housing supply, or sell your house for what is likely a substantial profit. Seriously, we know what happens if you artificially constrain the rate at which property tax rises relative to the value of property, we’ve run that experiment. It’s called prop 13 and it’s bad for literally everyone who didn’t buy their property decades ago.
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May 2, 2020 18:54
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