> But it's pushing her into poverty.

No, its pushing her into a cash flow problem. Its not poverty; she has substantial wealth, but its all in the house.

There are mechanisms, of course, to access that wealth without moving, including ones specifically geared toward income-limited house-rich retirees.

Now, those end up creating a debt that must be resolved before transferring the house, including via estate, so living on the value of the home reduces its utility as a vehicle for generational wealth, but...unless you want to reproduce California’s system which makes it much harder for people to become homeowners while rewarding those who already have, eapecially the wealthiest, making the rich richer and what would be the comfirtable middle class anywhere else in the country poor, that’s the way it works (and your exact scenario was the major sales pitch that was used to sell the California system; its maybe understadable how people without 50 years of California’s example fell for it then, but...)

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echelon 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

So your solution is to take the house away via a second mortgage?

Why are we trying to take houses away from homeowners? Many who have lived in their homes for twenty years or more. What services that the city has could be so important to push residents out of the homes they've lived in all their lives? Most of it is inefficient pork on admin and roles the people living there didn't choose to hire for.

Build more. Encourage building multifamily. Pay to buy these homeowners out of their single family and convert the land to multifamily. If you can't pay, don't try to make it up with tax increases. That forces people out.

Deregulate and build.

Maybe a city failing to stretch services will send new residents seeking other cities, which would be healthier anyway.

	▲	ericmay 21 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Or maybe property taxes should be based on the services rendered. If they increased from $1,000/year to $20,000/year and you subtract away the inflation here is the city government delivering more value or less? In my city and others our city council delivers large grants to non-profits and other entities under various auspices. “Defending gay rights” is one, or maybe helping the homeless or something. Of course I support both causes in general, but if the city gives a million dollars away maybe we just have to have some people kicked out of their homes to pay for these programs? You can say well we will just raise taxes on the wealthy. Sure yea, whatever but that isn’t a viable long term strategy for places outside of California or New York which have an ability to capture wealth better due to intrisinic location value. There are only so many “rich” people. Could I afford another $10,000 in city taxes? Yea. I won’t be able to go out to eat or shop at local business as much though. So then what happens? Do those businesses go under? Raise prices? What about their property tax? Maybe instead I sell and take a loss on the house and the market value goes down so now that home pays less in taxes (depending on how this stuff is measured in a given jurisdiction). > Maybe a city failing to stretch services will send new residents seeking other cities, which would be healthier anyway. Yea. Tell Google and Meta and whoever to stop putting more jobs in the “cool” cities and come to Ohio where I live instead of these data centers. This stuff is rather complicated, unfortunately. Even the case of a city let’s say “building affordable housing” is arguably a benefit to the local homeowners, but if you do that yea sorry Granny McPension has to pay for it too - she has a house, she’s wealthy!
	▲	tkfu 14 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Pay to buy these homeowners out of their single family and convert the land to multifamily. But that's what the market is already doing? In your example from above, you can take a $400,000 windfall and move somewhere else, or take out a mortgage against that $400,000 of new equity to pay your taxes and still come out waaaaay ahead. I don't understand your characterization of a second mortgage as "taking the house away" at all.