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 44 minutes 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 11 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 10 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 16 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 17 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 32 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 43 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.