Home is the new luxury item. (responsibility, poor, Alaska, Miami)
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Simply indexing the Home Owner Exemption would have been highly regressive.
I would never want renters stuck in the rent slavery days...when people had to pay rents based on someone else's opinion of value.
(So, yes, rent control was the perfect renter response to Prop 13.)
Taxes are forced...
Renters are free to accept or decline... the law even provides most receive 60 day notice in advance.
Taxes are due as assessed without exception.
I have filed property tax appeals and won... it took 29 months for me to receive the refund from the time I paid plus I had to file a $50 hearing fee...
There are plenty of homes that fit that description in many fine areas across the US.
But you'll still have to qualify for a loan.
If he'd just give up the storage unit, in 10 years he'd have around $25,000 saved. In some places you can buy a studio condo outright. Screw qualifying for a mortgage!
Lemme guess, you believe apartments should be exempt from the protections of Prop 13 and that apartments should be taxed at a higher rate than owner-occupied SFR? And people who don't own homes should not be protected from being taxed out of their homes?
Perhaps rent controls in California represented a backlash directed at attitudes like yours?
I do believe that, because apartments are a business. It's not renters who would not be protected, it would be the business owner/landlord. And despite your constant assertions that rents are tied to property tax, the market will STILL determine rents.
??? I had financing up to $50K from my employer. The house payment would have been less than the rent I was paying at the time. The house payment would have been HALF of today's rent. I had the foresight to look ahead and tried to plan accordingly.
I believe people are entitled only to what they can afford to buy from a willing seller. No more, no less. You seem to prefer less.
No, you want to force me to have less, by dividing up existing neighborhoods into dense housing that creates an environment that I don't want to live in.
So, you had financing. You can barely pay rent now. How would you have dealt with repairs and improvements? And you are, as usual, conveniently ignoring the cost of dividing the property. Who would have paid for that? It's not free, you know.
Land is much more scarce now in the economically developed areas. If you're building, you construct a house appropriate to the cost of the dirt it sits on. If an 80x80 lot in Palo Alto is worth $1 million, you're not going to build a tiny house on it.
With income and wealth stratification, home ownership for the masses kind of has to be high density housing. Condos. Single family homes on their own lot sit on land that makes them unaffordable. From an urban planning point of view, this is a good thing because it makes public transportation viable. It's tough to have public transportation in suburban sprawl. As this wealth and income stratification problem increases, automobiles are going to be out of reach of a lot of people. This is how Europe and Asia do it.
I understand the shortage of land in big metro areas but that shouldn't surprise anyone.
And there are plenty of "economically developed" areas outside of massive metro areas.
Most of the US is FAR from being anywhere nearly as congested as Europe or Asia. My point is that there are viable options - smaller cities and towns - with a substantially lower cost of living.
I get it that the very idea of living in a smaller city or town is anathema to some people, and that's OK. But it's their choice. I could CHOOSE to live in a big metro area, but I don't choose to do so mainly because of the cost of living. To each his own, but these are usually choices we make - they're not forced on us.
I understand the shortage of land in big metro areas but that shouldn't surprise anyone.
And there are plenty of "economically developed" areas outside of massive metro areas.
Most of the US is FAR from being anywhere nearly as congested as Europe or Asia. My point is that there are viable options - smaller cities and towns - with a substantially lower cost of living.
I get it that the very idea of living in a smaller city or town is anathema to some people, and that's OK. But it's their choice. I could CHOOSE to live in a big metro area, but I don't choose to do so mainly because of the cost of living. To each his own, but these are usually choices we make - they're not forced on us.
Because our choices are either Modesto or San Francisco. Obviously there are no other choices in the entire United States of America. Everyone else apparently lives in another dimension and San Franciscans can only get there by finding the magic circle, turning around three times, and reciting the spell of the Gitchee Goomee backwards.
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