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Comment by coenhyde | Hacker News Reader

Because they have a house and ~$1.9M in free equity. The younger generation doesn't have that opportunity. If they can't afford the property tax they can downsize easily. It's not easy for young people to afford $2M houses, especially when paying high state income taxes to make up for the lack of sufficient property taxes.

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The younger generation can do the same thing the older generation did and buy a house in a cheaper real estate market. It's funny that people feel entitled to buy a house in the most expensive place on earth. I think a lot of the people who bought houses for 100k in California in the 1970s would not have expected to buy a condo at the same time on 5th Ave in Manhattan (for instance). It's a recent phenomena that young people feel they should own property in world cities.

Since values where falsely supported by corrupt mortgages and appraisals then further supported by our government bailout not allowing the market to work as it should, why shouldn't people also expect to not be priced out of their neighborhoods? Shouldn't median income have anything to do with what housing costs should be in any given area? Everywhere in California for example isn't 5th ave or Silicone valley, so your argument is flawed.

Housing prices are dictated by supply and demand. The supply is artificially low due to zoning (this needs to be fixed), the supply was artificially high due to the issues you stated.

None of that has anything to do with taxing home owners. When you buy a house you should be taxed on what you paid for it. The government shouldn't have a back door to come and raise your taxes as high as it wants.

I think it's funny that people feel entitled to these property tax breaks. I'm less concerned about individuals feeling left out, and more concerned about the systemic issues lack of home ownership for this generation will cause. We've distorted the market so much through a variety of bad policies, i don't think it is an unreasonable request to start reversing the trend.

This generation has an unrealistic idea of where they should live (some of them at least). It's not like the people who bought houses for 100k in the Bay Area in the 1970s were making 300k a year working for Facebook. There's nothing stopping people from moving to Ohio and getting a less well paying/glamorous job but buying a house.

The solution is there today, people just don't want to take it because they want to live in SF/NY... When houses were affordable in those areas, they didn't have the cachet they have now.

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