Another un-intended consequences of prop 13 is that existing homeowners do not feel the pain of high house prices. So you see homeowners are all very protective of house prices — they don’t care about affordability at all. There is a very strong “not in my backyard” mentality. In fact, the higher the price, the merrier. So what should be a community problem (i.e. high housing prices) became a minority problem (i.e. for the unlucky late comers).

So I probably will be for using a 5 year average property value as a tax base (maybe subject to an initial price adjusted by inflation cap) to make it easier for curent homeowners, but not making them forever delinked with high housing price except at the time of profit taking — not that I’ll be a policy maker anytime soon, and not that prop 13 will be changed anytime soon.

Sorry for the many posts on prop 13. Obviously I feel strongly about it. I don’t like a policy that seems to serve a good purpose at the time but creates distortions years later. So I’ll make it my last. You’re welcome to disagree.