It is more complicated than that. A few years back when my youngest entered 1st grade, I attended some meetings where the superintendent talked about school expansions in the pipeline due to confirmed property development projects.

Namely, when new housing is added, there are infrastructure considerations and corresponding expenses that translate to higher taxes. Civil planners have formulas for how much the student population will grow based on the housing density/type.

Schools built on parcels based on 1970's population now have to expand to fit more students or the township has to find and acquire new land to build a new school.

That requires raising taxes for bonds. A new school is several million dollars and then hiring staff. NJ has a legal limit of 25:1 in elementary. Add 100 students and you add at least 4 teachers that have to be supported by taxpayers. Expand the lunchroom, build a new gym, purchase new computers, all the ways up the chain for the next 12 years.

If you ever look at your municipal tax bill, you will find that education is going to be the biggest expense by far.

On top of that, roads may need to be widened. New roads have to be built and maintained. Municipal staff may need to increase.

Some services may actually benefit from economies of scale (waste collection). Most will not.

Imagine you bought a house in 1970 (i.e. my development) and you were paying $1000 annual property taxes. Now your property taxes are $12000 because of the increased spend on infrastructure and increased assessed value. You're a retiree and you've paid taxes for 2 or 3 generations of students. You live on a fixed income and your property taxes are a higher and higher proportion of your income. What do you do? Mortgage the house to pay taxes to fund more growth?

The problem is exacerbated because obviously people want to go where the good schools are, where it's low crime, good infra, easy access to transportation. That drives demand and puts pressure on services while also raising taxes to pay to fund municipal bonds for growth.

End of the day, my personal belief is that housing is a right. But I can also see why middle class folks, retirees end up pushing back when they get the bill in the form of increased property taxes. I've lived in my house 10 years now and my taxes have gone up ~$3500 in that time. Every school in the township had to expand to meet population growth with the additional units. Sure, my home value went up as well, but I can't cash that out. I can't imagine how it feels for retirees that are living in a family home here.

▲ williadc 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a really well-thought out comment, and I agree with just about everything in it. One comment I'd like to call out for additional consideration is the comment on retirees being priced out due to rising property taxes.

In my experience, most retirees have more rooms/land than they can make productive use of. I feel that there should be some pressure for them to sell that property to families who can use it more productively. That's the stick, but I feel there needs to be a carrot, where builders are constructing homes that these retirees will be drawn to. There are retirement communities in the southern US like "The Villages" https://www.thevillages.com/, but as the population here ages, we need to build these everywhere so retirees can move into the communities that meet their needs without being forced to leave their cities.

	▲	CharlieDigital 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		`> I feel that there should be some pressure for them to sell that property to families who can use it more productively.` I agree to extents. One lives in NY/NJ/CT because this is a big finance and pharma hub and it makes sense to live here while one works and eventually leave when that resource is no longer necessary. But there's nuance here, too: families. My wife's side is a big Italian family. Everyone's here. What do you do if your grand kids are all here? How do you support your adult kids and help them achieve financial security? Or leave and secure your own? Neither is an easy choice. `> There are retirement communities...` There are here as well. The reason they work here, as far as I understand it, is that they count towards "affordable housing" units that are mandated by state law here in NJ. But I put that in quotes because these units in 55+ communities are often honestly still quite expensive, especially if you've already paid off your mortgage decades ago.

▲ jltsiren 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The real issue seems to be the top-heavy tax system that forces local governments to rely on property taxes. A local income tax would make them more capable of building and maintaining infrastructure, but that would require lowering taxes at higher levels. (Income taxes are superior to wealth taxes in the sense that income tends to correlate better with the ability to pay tax.)

If the demand for housing is high, zoning fees can also be used to make developers pay for the infrastructure upfront. If done properly, their impact on housing costs should be minimal, as they mostly extract some of the added value created by the zoning from the landowner.

▲ CharlieDigital 5 hours ago | parent [-]

    > If the demand for housing is high, zoning fees can also be used to make developers pay for the infrastructure upfront...

It's not that simple because these often end up as legal battles and in some cases, there are laws already on the books at the state and municipal level that would have to be changed.

The developer for sure does not want to build a school and even if they build the school, they are not going to be paying for the teachers that are going to need to support the increased student body for every decade into the future; that's on the taxpayers.

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jltsiren 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The underlying assumption is that laws will be changed when necessary. If it's not possible to do that, most issues probably can't be fixed.

More fundamentally, this is related to the principle of subsidiarity that is occasionally popular in the EU. Everything the government does should be done by the lowest level that can reasonably do it. And to enable that, local and state governments should have sufficiently wide tax bases.

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CharlieDigital 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Laws are voted on by the people. And if the municipal elections are scoped to current residents, they will vote to not expand in almost every case.

At the state level, we have housing laws that mandate ratios of affordable housing. Many townships faught this in court (and lost) because schools and infrastructure are capital projects. Bonds are secured today against some future tax base.

Don't forget that developers and investors are voters too (and lobbyists) who are going to vote against the municipalities.

My point: it is a nuanced situation and not as simple as "Got mine FU" or "just build more". Build where? How do you pay for it fairly?

	▲	jltsiren 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		People often vote to support new housing, as long as the entire system works reasonably well. My solution was to widen the tax base to make the system work better. The incentives around property taxes do not support significant new construction. If housing becomes more affordable, tax revenue per capita goes down, while local government spending stays the same or increases. Local governments should therefore not rely too much on property taxes. Income taxes, on the other hand, are good. You are taxing things you want to grow, and you get more tax revenue when your policies are good to the people. Local governments might want to collect more income taxes and less property taxes. When the demand for housing is high, zoning creates significant windfall to the landowner. Some of this windfall can be taxed to support infrastructure construction.

▲ slyall 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except you get exactly the same opposition in places where schools are funded by a higher level of government

and if anything you taxes will go down because they are now spread across more households.

	▲	CharlieDigital 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I can't answer for different states and municipalities, but I know about mine and NJ based on how we had to expand every school in the district over the last 10 years. These are big capital expenses. My property taxes have never gone down, even as my township has expanded. Part of this is that taxes are calculated on assessed value. Where I'm at, assessed value is a combination of lot size + structural improvement. Tax bill is assessed value * rate. Assessments have never gone down. The more people want to move here, the more values go up, the more capital projects need to be undertaken before new tax payers are contributing. It may take years to build a new development, but the multi-million dollar budget to expand the school and staff up teachers has to happen in tandem, before the new tax base exists. My lot is from the 70's. It's huge. New lots are significantly smaller. Townhouses and apartments are very dense. New development does not yield savings in taxes in practice unless it is commercial development. A big piece of farmland contributes taxes, but requires little in services. Convert that 50 acres into 50 units and now you need much more services and infrastructure compared to the 50 acre farm. You underestimate just how much schools and teachers cost. Those 50 units might add 50-100 students. Capital projects start even before the units finish to prevent overcrowded schools. Contracts are signed for garbage and snow removal if 5 of those units are occupied or 50.