Recognizing the signs of disruption in our urban habitat

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/8/21/whats-wrong-with-this-picture

by oftenwrong • 7 years ago

203 169 7 years ago

com2kid2• 7 years ago

Around Seattle, people bought up land in anticipation of light rail coming in a decade+ later. The gambling ones bought up the land before the propositions to fund light rail to those areas had even passed.

One of my friends took that gamble, in another decade it is going to pay of handsomely.

taffer7• 7 years ago

Is there no way that the government can buy large plots of land around planned stations, build the railroad and then sell back the land?

timerol• 7 years ago

The government can, via eminent domain. This is how private railroads in the US were financed in the 1800s. The companies paid for land at pre-development prices via eminent domain, then built the railroad, then sold the much-improved land at higher prices. Basically, the land appreciation covered the capital costs, and fares only covered the operating costs. Japan and Hong Kong still use this strategy, and the new private railways in the US are attempting to do it as well. (Virgin Trains and Texas Central)

Kalium• 7 years ago

Yes, with the caveat that none of those are fast and this is the kind of thing that can easily lose elections.

saagarjha• 7 years ago

Wouldn't that drive up the prices of the land?

jdavis703• 7 years ago

Sure the government could do it. But any city council that tried to do this would likely find themselves voted out.

Case in point: it was a tough push to get AB 2923 through the CA legislature. It allowed BART to build dense housing on their own parking lots. Thankfully common sense prevailed. The bill was approved and BART is now using their power to plan for more transit oriented development.

cagenut• 7 years ago

if you're interested google "transit value capture", its a re-emerging trend in infrastructure finance and development.

paxys• 7 years ago

It was refreshing to see Seattle finally get serious about public transit. Even though I moved out before I could enjoy its benefits, having light rail connections all the way to Everett, Redmond, Issaquah and Tacoma is going to be a big help for the housing problem within the next 5-10 years.

lonelappde• 7 years ago

Until buses get reserved lanes it's hard to say Seattle is serious. Last-mile is still terrible.

burlesona2• 7 years ago

This kind of economic dysfunction is often cited as the reason to switch to a Land Value Tax, which is explained pretty well on Wikipedia[1].

It's also why so many people were interested in SB-50[2], which would have overridden local zoning controls to allow higher density development around transit stops.

I think the biggest challenge is the transition. The current system is broken, but we typically look at changes in terms of the desired end-state, and when we look at it that way it's clear that the change will be very disruptive to a lot of people who are benefiting from the status quo. Those are the people who turn out and ensure that the changes cannot go through - even if they might agree that the long-term outcome would be better.

Strong Towns has done a good job emphasizing incrementalism in its approach to urban problems[3], but I'd love to see more of a conversation around this in a legal / regulatory context. Are there ways that we can undo the harm of bad regulations and transition to better ones that aren't so disruptive to the people who have built their lives around the current rules? What would those look like?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

2: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

3: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/5/incrementalism

zeveb4• 7 years ago

One way would be to buy people off: figure out the net economic benefit to the city, county or state of changing the rules, and as part of the rule change grant some fraction of those dollars to those who change in the way we want.

I can see two bug problems with this, one practical and one political. The practical one is that estimating benefit is a black art — we really can't trust anyone, partisan or non-partisan, to make accurate predictions of future economic benefits (there's a secondary practical sub-problem, which is that such an estimate would be ripe for capture). The political problem is that we'd end up rewarding those who have been benefiting all these years (e.g. all the homeowners with unrealistically low property taxes for the last four decades).

ergothus3• 7 years ago

I'm in Seattle, and my house only a couple of blocks away from a new light-rail transit station that is opening. My neighborhood has been rezoned for MRU (condos and apartments vs the single family homes that are here now). Plus, the city is widening the main road my house is on (overdue anyway, but will definitely be further needed with the traffic to the rail station).

So we're either going to be bought by a developer or bought by the city, whichever comes first.

It's been an exercise in details for me, because I generally am not a NIMBY-ist and support the sorts of changes that will be moving us from our home. My objections are not to the fact that this will happen...but there's been VAST uncertainty.

* Will be forced out? If so, on what terms? (City is currently saying "relocation" rather than "property purchase", but only vague terms so far)

* Will a developer offer us enough money to match the way real estate costs have soared in the area? Would this be a nice payout, a basically flat deal, or a net reduction in convenience/comfort?

* And the real kicker...When? We've been told more info would be available in 6-24 months for...at least 2 years, probably 3. As it stands now, other than more certainty that staying is not an option, we still don't have any answers, certainly not enough to make plans for. I've let house repairs and maintenance lapse (overdue for a new roof and the electrical system is woefully inadequate. Drainage needs to be improved, and our fence has started to sag. A tree came down and we've just left it.)

When reading these sorts of debates I always imagined it was just a matter of "suck it up and accept that you have to have some inconvenience for the greater good". In practice, I didn't realize it would be years of uncertainty. Not knowing where you will live and what your resources will be like has been a real source of stress for my wife and I. Having a house that is creeping into disrepair and not knowing if you will put up with it for a year or 5 years before it is all torn down is a big pain. It puts another light on why someone might push back.

I'm still in favor of the greater good - but the cost has not been "I have to move". It's been much more.

peteey2• 7 years ago

Being treated equally may seem like a punishment when you've become accustomed to special privilege.

Suppose property owners have been benefiting from the tax shelters for 10 years. That was the payoff. Don't dally around asking what their next hand out should be. They've been riding the gravy train for years. Now the perks need to end. Welcome to a level playing field.

asdff7• 7 years ago

-1) rip out street parking or a lane on all arterial roads and install a bollarded buss lane.

0) remove single family zoning in the city of los angeles and remove height restrictions on parcels a 10 min walk to a metro station

1) enact an actual property tax to fund transit

2) 1% sales tax on cars and luxury goods to fund transit

3) watch the egregiously inflated housing prices tumble to rational levels

4) buy property and build elevated rail above

5) enjoy the lack of smog

numakerg• 7 years ago

Would this replace income and capital gains tax as well?

cactus2093• 7 years ago

Based on polling SB-50 had the support of roughly 2/3 of Californians [0]. If we actually decided things democratically like we pretend to we wouldn’t need to worry so much about strong interests coming out against this.

The people benefiting from the status quo have made hundreds of billions of combined dollars over the past decade alone at the expense of everyone else. They’ve built metaphorical walls to keep everyone else out of their cities except themselves. It’s long past time they were stopped from doing that. Who cares if they don’t like the transition? Everyone else doesn’t like the stranglehold they’ve been living under with the status quo.

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/sf.curbed.com/platform/amp/2019...

standardUser• 7 years ago

This reminds me of a similar land use issue I've seen a hundred times over. In major cities, in the middle of some of the densest, most trafficked, most transit-oriented neighborhoods, you'll find vacant lots and storefronts that sit there for years. Places that could, presumably, bring in many thousands of dollars every month in rent instead bring in $0 month after month. And the prime real estate sits unused, despite the thousands of residents and tourists that walk buy every single day. I've seen it in many different cities and towns.

Maybe there is some real-estate-specific knowledge I lack that can explain this phenomenon?

karthikb• 7 years ago

The land value appreciates over time regardless of use. Why worry about setting up a business and trying to make money when you could do nothing and make a lot of money 10 years down the line when you sell?

hellisothers• 7 years ago

The value of commercial real estate is also tied directly to what it can rent for so you’re encouraged to wait to maximize rent which may mean leaving it abandoned or vacant.

grecy• 7 years ago

You could also rent it out and make money in the 10 years you're waiting for it to appreciate.

tlb• 7 years ago

It often comes down to the laziness of the owners. Both offices I've rented in the Bay Area were owned by family trusts, where the children of the original owner were getting a check every month but nobody was interested in doing the work to fix the place up and find higher value tenants.

There's a huge amount of that real estate dark matter around here. It takes some legwork to find such buildings and rent them. And if you fix them up, the landlord might notice and raise the rent.

It's an inefficient market, waiting for disruption. Some startups are trying.

draw_down• 7 years ago

I live near a place with a similar story (not in California). The owner comes from a wealthy family and doesn’t care to rent it out at the moment. It has been empty for years.

oftenwrong• 7 years ago

"Thank You From a Land Speculator"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqQhoZgFZgk

onlyrealcuzzo• 7 years ago

I haven't seen this anywhere on the scale that I see it in California. It's largely due to tax reasons. Prop 13 allows property to not ever have the property tax exceed a certain percentage of the ORIGINAL purchase price. If you bought a half acre parking lot in Hollywood for $20k in 1960 -- even though it's worth $20M today -- your tax bill is likely less than $1k a year.

You might look at these places and see wasted capital. Why not cash out? Well, what would you do when cash out? Invest the money and try to make a better return than you're currently making.

Yes, these parking lots don't make much money WRT to their value. No body would buy a half acre land today and put a parking lot on it. So why do they exist?

The little money they make is usually more than they can get as a percentage of the value invested in any other safe asset. For example, a parking lot of that size might only make $2K profit per day, but because the taxes are essentially $0, you're generating a return of 4% per year. That might not sound impressive compared to equities, but you have to remember that the land is also increasing in value -- currently at about the same rate as equities.

Further, you have to consider that profits from land sales are taxed as capital gains. The return on equities includes dividends, which are taxed as income, which is taxed at a higher rate.

I'm not as familiar with New York tax code, but it might have similar laws to appease aristocrats. Other than these areas, it's really a pretty recent phenomenon for land to be as expensive as it is and increasing in value at the rate it is. I'm sure a lot of it is just owners unsure of what to do in this strange environment.

Take Texas for example -- until very recently, land was plentiful and very cheap. If you had a poorly utilized piece of land, there wasn't a lot of reason to try to figure out what to do with it.

burlesona2• 7 years ago

Except for that property taxes in Texas are quite high for the US and there's no equivalent to prop 13. So, mostly you're right, there hasn't been as much pressure to use the land well, but as urban centers have appreciated there is more pressure than there would be in California.

cesarb• 7 years ago

The property might be tied up in a court dispute, a bankruptcy, or inheritance. As an example, a building near where I work sat vacant for years; I did a web search for the building's address, and found an article mentioning that the company which owned the building had been bankrupt.

achenatx2• 7 years ago

You can also get cash out of an asset like land by using it to back loans. So you get the advantage of land appreciation and borrowing money on a tax deductible basis at very low interest rates.

If the land is appreciating at 10%/year then it is a no brainer to borrow against it at 4% (pre tax)

goblin892• 7 years ago

In central areas of Hong Kong island locals who inherit stores at ground level sometimes never bother opening them at all, instead going to banks and using those properties as bargaining chips to get comfortable loans they’d basically live on and/or invest.

This was a point in a presentation about issues in local urban communities I attended a couple years ago. (The dynamic is not great for a community.)

mark-r• 7 years ago

There was an article I probably saw here on HN a couple of years ago. The problem is that rents can't lower to what the market will bear, because that would lower the property value. The loan that was used to buy the property is based on that value, and if the value drops the owner may suddenly need to come up with a pile of cash to make up the difference. It makes more financial sense to leave it unrented at a high price than to rent it out lower.

rcpt2• 7 years ago

You're about to "see the cat" dude.

https://henrygeorgedevon.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/do-you-see...

asdff7• 7 years ago

At least in west la it seems there is like no commercial vacancy it They just cram little shops and groceries and restaurants and swap meets on top of little shops and groceries and dispensaries with even more people selling under canopies on the sidewalks. Fruit is sold everywhere. The place has a pulse, 4 million+ live in la after all.

mempko• 7 years ago

This is definitely not true for older cities like NYC and Chicago. The land around train stops is valuable there. Chicago area grew outward from the train lines before cars showed up. Each stop has a town with its own higher density downtown.

Animats2• 7 years ago

This is only a problem for a very few areas of the United States. Remember, US population is leveling off. The current growth rate is 0.8% per year. Without illegal immigration, that number will go negative, as it already has for Japan and most of Europe. The current US fertility rate is 1.8. 2.1 is breakeven.

New York City had about the same population in 1950 and 2000. Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland have all shrunk. New York was once the largest city in the world; now it's in 9th place. Nationwide, there's no great need to build.

Remember the 2008 recession in the Bay Area? FOR SALE signs everywhere? No traffic jams? It's coming again, probably within the next year.

novok3• 7 years ago

Japan is also having a concentration effect. Japan might be shrinking, but tokyo is growing as everyone moves there. There is no signs of this general trend abaiting. Recessions are also only a few years long, the growth trend is the status quo for the majority of the time.

Animats2• 7 years ago

Yes, Tokyo and Osaka are up. The rest of Japan is emptying out.

wil421• 7 years ago

You’re cherry picking numbers and doing Apples to Oranges comparisons.

The Midwest has been losing people for a long time Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio are some of the worst. The Dakota’s are only gaining due to fracking booms.

New York City expanded outside its historic area and into Jersey and any surrounding areas cheap enough to build on.

https://www.csgmidwest.org/policyresearch/0616-demographic-f...

zanny• 7 years ago

Fortunately America isn't Japan or even in large part much of Europe in that it has a long history of constant immigration from often very culturally disjoint places.

Countries like India, Nigeria, etc won't crest their growth for decades and in that time they will add another 1-2 billion people to the planet. Even after the cresting going below replacement will take another generation or two. So for at least the next hundred years there will be plenty of people in the world to import if you want to keep your population pyramid from changing.

That is all aside the fact that its well established now that demographics are shifting even in limited population growth scenarios. Urban migration continues because the availability of productive labor anywhere except at the highest concentrations of human capital continue to diminish. There is no more gold rush of raw resources to establish whole states over and all the industry we have for resource extraction is getting automated away.

In the next hundred years we should see the gradual centralization of human populations for purposes of survival. And as the available job pool shrinks, until the jump is made to a UBI / socialist / post-scarcity model in the future the increasing pressure basic necessities have on people will keep forcing the cost of labor to stay stagnant as it has been for 40 years and thus inflation will pressure people into living more efficiently.

Right now having a car and commuting 4 hours a day from a 3000 square foot house with a yard you need to maintain, where in part you need to pay for all the roads you traverse, all the infrastructure wired to your house, the services required (fire, medical, police) is insanely expensive and insanely inefficient compared to people living in condos, apartments, etc with public transit in a proper metro. Automation will keep gnawing away at median disposable income until the median is forced to forgo luxuries like split housing.

Those transitions and shifts will require legislative support, which given the fact those shifts will be made because of outdated state policy probably doesn't bode well for it being a smooth migration.

asdff7• 7 years ago

Nationwide, on average, sure. But California is short by millions of homes and just needs the zoning and labor to produce.

mmanfrin• 7 years ago

I'm glad the article brought up Prop 13. It is my belief that Prop 13 is the biggest cancer on the state of California, and one that we will almost never be rid of. Prop 13 is why people don't move. Prop 13 is why California occasionally has budget issues. Prop 13 makes my parents home property taxes 1/4th the amount of my own, despite their home being 4x the value of mine.

dbcurtis• 7 years ago

Prop 13 was a reaction against confiscatory taxes that broke an important social contract.

The contract: If you save, invest, and pay off your home mortgage so that you own it free and clear, later in life when you are retired and living on a fixed income no one can come along and confiscate the property that you bought and paid for fair and square.

The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes. But forcing pensioners to sell their homes, disrupting/destroying a life-time of plans and work was never going to be a smooth ride -- who could have thought that it would be?

The government pre-Prop 13 was viewed as kleptocratic by a sizeable portion of the population, with arguably good reason.

So, do you have a better solution that has empathy for pensioners that played by the rules all their lives and have plans to settle into modest enjoyment of their so-called "golden years"? Prop 13 was an attempt to stop perceived thievery, a crude bludgeon, perhaps, but a sufficient number of desperate people saw it as a solution to get it enacted.

asdfgasd6• 7 years ago

The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes. But forcing pensioners to sell their homes, disrupting/destroying a life-time of plans and work was never going to be a smooth ride -- who could have thought that it would be?

Financial instruments that prevent that already exist. If your home is worth millions of dollars it's not that hard to find a way to pay the property tax. "Having more money" is rarely a real problem.

a sufficient number of desperate people saw it as a solution to get it enacted.

No, people who's material interests are in direct conflict with a functional society pushed for it. It passed through a combination of "think of the elders" concern-trolling and libertarian dark money.

beat• 7 years ago

Just because a solid majority of people think something is a good idea doesn't make it a good idea. That's the problem with Prop 13, and with democracy in general.

Ensorceled5• 7 years ago

It’s hard to have sympathy for people whose home has skyrocketed in value and they now “can’t afford” the property tax on their multimillion dollar homes.

What it needed is a way for people whose homes had only gone up a small amount from getting budget busting increments. Once your home has doubled in value, there are other financial mechanisms to solve that problem and you can afford to pay the increase.

taffer7• 7 years ago

That is why Prop 13 will not go away in a foreseeable future, but the whole idea of tying all your savings to your house is flawed. Apart from putting all your eggs in one basket, it also creates all sorts of bad incentives like Prop 13.

sdenton42• 7 years ago

Sending the post-work population to a nice quiet farm upstate doesn't sound so bad to me...

It's hard for me to have much sympathy for the dream of keeping your home forever when the great majority of people I know have basically no hope of ever owning a home in the area.

AnimalMuppet3• 7 years ago

When you put it that way, the solution is obvious - the state government needs to spend less money.

Note well: I said "obvious", not "easy" or even "politically possible". But I think it's useful to note that, in important ways, California is doing this to itself.

vonmoltke7• 7 years ago

Prop 13 was a reaction against confiscatory taxes that broke an important social contract.
The contract: If you save, invest, and pay off your home mortgage so that you own it free and clear, later in life when you are retired and living on a fixed income no one can come along and confiscate the property that you bought and paid for fair and square.

That doesn't explain why Prop 13 applies to commercial, industrial, and rental properties.

honkycat• 7 years ago

We cannot halt society's progress because a small amount of wealthy people's privilege will be injured.

I am sure there are reasonable solutions other than: "Do nothing and let the country rot."

scarejunba• 7 years ago

This is not an adequate explanation for why Prop 13 tax basis can be inherited or why it is valid for commercial buildings. The "sell their homes" rhetoric does not work for investment properties either.

guelo2• 7 years ago

That's true everywhere that property taxes exist. Why was it only banned in California?

musicale2• 7 years ago

I am pretty OK with not forcing pensioners to sell their homes in order to pay ever-increasing taxes.

It also seems nice to not tax small businesses out of existence.

On the other hand, it would be nice to not have as many closed storefronts and vacant lots in prime locations.

troydavis• 7 years ago

The contract breech: Property taxes going up so fast that the only possible solution was to sell your home. Now, of course the value of the home was going up, which was what was driving the taxes.

The State of California offers another solution. It's called Property Tax Postponement: https://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html

"The State Controller’s Property Tax Postponement Program allows homeowners who are seniors, are blind, or have a disability to defer current-year property taxes on their principal residence if they meet certain criteria including 40 percent equity in the home and an annual household income of $35,500 or less."

The taxes are deferred until a change of control, like due to a sale or transfer to next of kin. Many or most high-cost-of-living jurisdictions have similar programs.

djabatt• 7 years ago

If home taxes keep go up as your incomes goes down for people 65+ it has a very negative effect. It makes sense to me that taxes on property stay low and fixed.

m4632• 7 years ago

There might be a stigma associated with being close to a railway.

It's a meme in some movies - someone is staying in a run-down apartment or hotel near railway tracks and train will go by at night causing dust to shake loose from the ceiling.

Caltrain stations are subject to these kinds of noise and vibration - during the day the baby bullets bypass stations at 60 mph, and at night endlessly long freight trains barrel past.

taffer7• 7 years ago

That's probably more of an effect than a cause. In European cities it is often advertised how close an apartment is to a train station.

izzydata• 7 years ago

I just wanted to say that you should have used the word trope instead of meme.

m4632• 7 years ago

Yes, you're right (I would change my comment but missed the edit deadline)

maerF0x0• 7 years ago

They made the striking observation that at station after station, the immediately adjacent land uses are remarkably low-value. Parking lots. Vacant lots. Strip malls, auto body shops...
> Caltrain stations are subject to these kinds of noise

These trains mean someone has to wear earplugs to get a good night's sleep. No wonder the rich dont want to live near it.

carapace3• 7 years ago

Keep in mind, Redwood City will be literally underwater along with the rest of the Bay Area in a few decades.

dhruvrrp• 7 years ago

If the Bay is still relevant at that time, then all it would take is a few hundred million to contain the rising water levels, in the form of barriers, flood walls, etc.

quickthrower2• 7 years ago

Who's paying?

asdff7• 7 years ago

If nola can make a levee surely the richest city on this side of the pacific can too.

carapace3• 7 years ago

The levee that broke and destroyed the city?

Because of the topology of the Bay we would basically have to build a levee all the way around it. IANACivil Engineer, but that seems like a big deal.

All I'm saying is that if you're looking to buy or build in the Bay Area do your homework.

A couple of years ago I was looking at buying a condo on the water in Redwood City and it dawned on me that, by the time I paid off the mortgage, it would be underwater both literally and figuratively. ( https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-is-underwater-m... )

It doesn't make sense to build up new urban sites along CalTrain if we don't also deal with the effects of climate change, eh?

Endy3• 7 years ago

I can speak to the NJTransit example briefly buzzed past. In NJ, train stations are not destinations. Most people I see get off the train and into either an Uber or some other NJTransit vehicle.

Edited because of a misclick.

EliRivers• 7 years ago

In NJ, train stations are not destinations.

Isn't that the point the writer is making? That they should be bustling hives of residential, retail and commercial activity.

Endy3• 7 years ago

Yes, and the issue is that the trains were put in places that never were destinations. You would have to change the long-standing habits of businesses and commuters to alter that. Even they light rail doesn't change that. Mass transit fits in the edges and cracks here, and is something of a "necessary annoyance" to the state. For proof, look no further than the aggressive privatization of bus lines to companies who can't or won't run the buses on the schedule set by NJTransit. And they aren't being penalized in any meaningful way.

vonmoltke7• 7 years ago

Most aren't. Some towns are trying to change that. On the Montclair-Boonton line Bloomfield and Montclair (Bay Street) have higher-end apartment and mixed-use complexes either right next to the station or within a short walk.

I know the Main-Bergen line pretty much fits that description, though. Hell, there's one "station" that is just a half-ass strip of asphalt that passes for a parking lot.

Endy3• 7 years ago

I can think of three that fit that description. Or the ones up a bunch of stairs, with no parking and no real signs.

asdff7• 7 years ago

Those are commuter stations where you might live a couple miles away. Would you take an uber when you are a 10 min walk away? What if you had a bike lane and that became 3 mins with a scooter? All it takes is a place open at 6 am and a place open from 5pm on for an area like that to completely transform. People using uber is the fault of the transit area being zoned improperly.

musicale2• 7 years ago

Low density notwithstanding, the Menlo Park example does seem like a nice, walkable downtown area near the train station.

(And apparently the Menlo Park station was built in 1867, making it one of the oldest passenger rail stations in California!)

mjevans• 7 years ago

I like the concept of living near strong connectivity; however there are other downsides that NEED to be addressed.

1) The building code isn't good enough. I should not be able to hear my neighbors, let alone the train, at all when things are closed. I should also have fresh air that doesn't smell like laundry, perfumes, the garbage chute, or whatever cooking experiments are happening in other apartments.

2) Outside of cities cars are still needed; more so in America. That rail network needs to connect to multiple potential 'apartments for my car'. Those are also the places that would be a dropoff / interface for external to the city users to drive to and then take transit infrastructure the rest of the way in.

davidw2• 7 years ago

There's an argument that outside of actual safety issues, maybe it's best to leave this up to the market.

My wife and I looked at a house once in Padova, where we lived, that was right next to the train tracks. You couldn't help but feel the trains go by, let alone hearing them. It was not for us, but it was super cheap, and might have been an option for someone without a lot of other good options - or a great option for someone hearing impaired who didn't care too much.

achenatx2• 7 years ago

In texas we only have property taxes. Commercial property tends to be undertaxed because the appraisal districts are not allowed to see actual sales prices. Property taxes tend to be around 2-2.5% and for non homestead properties there is no limit to the increase.

We regularly hear about older people getting taxed out of their homes (though there are programs to somewhat hold their taxes constant).

In austin we are starting to have an affordability crisis, whereas cities like houston are doing much better.

The taxation is the same, what is different is the restrictive zoning in austin. In austin permitting can take 6-9 months and single family zoning restricts what can be built. The city council tried to revise zoning and failed due to NIMBYs, but they are trying again this year.

This is a reminder that the more competing systems of laws we have the better. Every program implemented at the federal level only gives us one chance to get it right. The state level gives us 50 chances and the local level gives us thousands of chances.

peteey2• 7 years ago

Florida lacks an income tax too. Property taxes are distorted due to a law called Save Our Homes. SOH limits increasing assessed value of home prices to inflation (Consumer Price Index) or 3%, whichever is lower.

This mostly shift the tax burden to new home buyers and renters.

You get odd effects like in 2009, when property values dramatically fell due to the market bubble bursting, taxes actually went up because the assessed values were so much lower then the just market value.

In 2016, a 6.9 million dollar house was only taxed at 2.8 million. Source https://www.jacksonville.com/photogallery/LK/20170125/PHOTOG...

UnFleshedOne• 7 years ago

No opinion on the specific issue at hand, but wouldn't you eventually want to take the winning system of laws and implement it on federal level? Or would you expect better performing systems to naturally spread over? Are there any examples of that actually happening?

filoleg• 7 years ago

I think it is not state spread vs. federal, but more like state spread -> federal. Disclaimer: talking about the US.

For something simple that can stand on its own, that was what we saw with gay marriage and, I personally believe, what we will see with cannabis legalization.

For something as complex and interconnected as property taxes, I don't think it will be that easy to convert it to federal, so state spread is what we can hope for in the near future. An example of a similar issue is income taxing, where we ended up with a two-tiered solution: one federal (same for every state) + one state (differs for each state, with some having none at all).

gnaritas• 7 years ago

You're assuming there'd be a winning system, that's a bad assumption, different systems would be acceptable to different sets of people. There isn't one right answer, there are many and people will gravitate to the ones they like. It's good that states can compete for citizens with each other.

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

In austin we are starting to have an affordability crisis, whereas cities like houston are doing much better.
The taxation is the same, what is different is the restrictive zoning in austin. In austin permitting can take 6-9 months and single family zoning restricts what can be built. The city council tried to revise zoning and failed due to NIMBYs, but they are trying again this year.

Austin's problems are straight out of a California textbook on what not to do.

abootstrapper• 7 years ago

To be fair, and not to hate on H-town, but Houston’s concrete sprawl is not exactly endearing, and it’s relaxed permitting may have played a roll in its increased impervious cover and flooding.

abathur• 7 years ago

I agree that Houston's concrete sprawl isn't endearing and that it's suffering some externalities, but in some respects I also see it as some sort of harbinger for Austin.

I like Austin, and would love to live there, but I'm timid about moving there in the short term because the transit, roadway, and housing situations don't seem very sustainable with all of this growth thrown on top.

FWIW, at least per numbers from proximityone.com (and I'm not certain how well-sourced the data is...) the Austin MSA is significantly less dense than Houston's:

Geography. The total land area of the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX MSA is 8,265.8 SqMi with water area of 1,178.1 SqMi. The metro ranked 21st among all metros based on total land area. With 2017 population density of 833.9, the metro ranked 20th among all metros (based on land area). http://proximityone.com/cbsa/1/cbsa26420.htm
Geography. The total land area of the Austin-Round Rock, TX MSA is 4,221.7 SqMi with water area of 58.4 SqMi. The metro ranked 96th among all metros based on total land area. With 2017 population density of 501.2, the metro ranked 49th among all metros (based on land area). http://proximityone.com/cbsa/1/cbsa12420.htm

ImaCake• 7 years ago

North Sydney around Ryde used to be like this. Low density with lots of shuttered shopfronts. But Sydney has undergone a massive apartment development boom and the areas around these train stations often have high rise apartments now. The shops are all occupied. Eastwood even has a minimum height requirement for new buildings.

Recognizing the signs of disruption in our urban habitat

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