What poverty--she owns a house worth $500k. I think deferral schemes where certain individuals can pay taxes upon sale of the home (with fair interest) should be fine to avoid forcing anyone into a reverse mortgage.

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bunderbunder an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Houses are not the same thing as cash or other fungible assets.

Especially not when you're getting older, have limited ability to manage a move for yourself, built a life and raised your kids in the building, and would have to consider unloading a lifetime's worth of objects and/or moving infeasibly far away from your friends and community to get into a living situation that's more financially tenable.

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dragonwriter an hour ago | parent [-]

> Houses are not the same thing as cash or other fungible assets.

> Especially not when you're getting older

Houses are wealth. And the wealth in them can be accessed while retaining use of the house. Especially when you are getting older.

Why are we replaying the dishonest “think of the retirees” now? It was bullshit in California in 1978 to sell Prop 13, and its even bigger (and more transparent) bullshit now when, especially when it is used to sell the same basic idea.

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brabel an hour ago | parent | next [-]

How can someone be so out of touch? A person buys a house, spend a whole life there, and through no action of her own happens to live in an area that drastically appreciates in value over the decades, all she wants is to spend her last few years in the same house that she loves and would never consider selling, and now we ask them to kindly pay all their income or more in property taxes, otherwise fuck off??

And where would she move to? All decent areas probably also increased in price, her property went up 10x in value but so did all other properties she would contemplate to buy. That’s the fallacy of thinking property is wealth when talking about your only residence.

What a morally bankrupt viewpoint.

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lumost 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The suggestion is that this person can get a mortgage to pay their property taxes over the next 20 or 30 years as part of their retirement - or they can sell their property and live well in a cheaper location.

Claiming that the retiree has a right to both the home value and the ability to live there is the friction point. It reads as hollow in the face of rising homelessness and the inability for young people and families to access housing.

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digital-cygnet 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The comment you are responding to is saying the opposite. They are saying that the person can access the wealth of the house (eg via a reverse mortgage) in order to pay the taxes while staying in the house. That's what this meant:

> Houses are wealth. And the wealth in them can be accessed while retaining use of the house. Especially when you are getting older.

Simple example. I bought the house at $100k. It's now worth $500k. That means I owe $20k/yr in taxes, but it also means I have $400k of additional wealth. A bank will lend me money with that wealth as collateral. If you imagine that the interest on the loan is roughly equivalent to the rate of appreciation of the property going forward, that's 20 years of taxes paid for by the increase in home value. Seems like a pretty good deal for everyone!

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kccqzy 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

GP is not forcing the retiree to move. GP is instead advocating retaining the use of property while reducing the cash flow burden. Asking someone to get a cash out refinance is not morally bankrupt; it is a pragmatic and fair solution. Some states also have deferred property tax schemes; these are even better. It is only fair for someone who, by luck, paid $100k to get a house that is now worth $500k and lives in a neighborhood that is now far better than when she bought the house.

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em500 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Defered property tax for elderly can be (and usually is) implemented as a lien on the estate, to be settled upon the owners death. Do you heve any problem with that? Or should we now also think of (inheritance of) the children?

	▲	simoncion 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, _seriously_. "And where would she move to?" -- Either the graveyard or the incinerator? She's dead... the bill doesn't come due until after her death and is settled from the value of the house.

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xingped 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It's classic neoliberalism think which for some reason the tech crowd is unreasonably susceptible to. "Oh you're poor? Can't afford your bills? Must be your fault." It's utterly disgusting.

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edmundsauto 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s not a bullshit idea, it is realistic and the problem in California is that it includes commercial and second homes.

I don’t want my country to force old people to either move from their home, or take out risky debt.

There are absolutely problems and prop 13 has been awful for California but it’s a red herring to worry about the primary residence exceptions.

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SteveGerencser an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So your solution is to force her to sell her home and move? Move where? I've seen this in so many areas of the country where property taxes on your property are tied to market value rather than purchase price. It drives retired and lower income people out of neighborhoods that they have lived in for decades, forcing them to move down the scale of home ownership.

Perhaps the retired person is living on a fixed income of $40k/year. Over time their proterty taxes on the home that they have lived in for decades can now be more than half of their total income? How is this fair at any level?

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coryrc an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Reverse mortgage.

> How is this fair at any level?

How is it fair that working people have to pay 10x for housing than she did when she was young? How is it fair that the money goes to her inheritance while she made her working neighbors pay her share of taxes?

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phoghed an hour ago | parent | next [-]

They don’t, they move to the ghetto like she did and start the gentrification cycle again

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SteveGerencser an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course, let's let yet another corporate land grab take even more residential property off the market for profit-based motives. This can't possibly do any more harm than locking property taxes at the time of sale.

Where I live, we are looking at locking property taxes once you hit a specified age (65) and have under a specified income ($40k+/-). The current debates revolve around exactly what those numbers are and at what level the taxes get locked. The goal is to protect the elderly who have already contributed to the economy and society for 40+ years and not force them into a financial situation forcing them to sell their home just to pay even more property taxes that they have paid for the entire ownership.

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epistasis an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Meeting the basic needs of the population, by having enough housing and preventing hoarding of housing by wealthy individuals, is not a "coporare land grab."

Quite the opposite.

	▲	SteveGerencser 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We are clearly talking about different things. I'm talking about protecting single home homeowners on a fixed income from being forced out of their homes. Staying in the only home she owns is not hoarding. Telling people that the solution is to sell their home to an insurance company as a solution is most certainly a corporate land grab. You seem to be arguing about people/corporations that own multiple homes or even entire portfolios of property. These are not the same argument.

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pixelatedindex an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Of course, let's let yet another corporate land grab take even more residential property off the market for profit-based motives.

The premise does not warrant this conclusion.

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nostrebored an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why should this person take up a family home in a desirable area? It is inefficient. The pressure she is feeling to leave is the system working as intended.

	▲	edmundsauto 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We shouldn’t prioritize efficiency when it comes to moral matters. That’s a bad idea for the government. People’s primary residences are more than just an economic asset. If you don’t understand that, it’s difficult to have a conversation as we have very different starting points about morality.

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ngaiorn an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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s3p an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well she doesn't have the 500k. This is akin to saying we should force people out if market conditions make their house more expensive. That seems like a really strange consequence to all this, idk

	▲	ForHackernews an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Either housing is an economic asset subject to market forces, or it's not. If it's not, then I would also like to live in a nice neighborhood for $100k and zero property tax, please. On the other hand, if it is, then this person has a substantial economic asset that she could reverse mortgage, rent out, or sell.

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throwitaway222 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So people that keep buying low (because that's what they can afford) are constantly being forced to move.

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solarkraft an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

To actually realize this value she would have to sell it.