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Comment by cocoa19 | Hacker News Reader

> The ones hit hardest are usually younger generations

Reminds me of prop 13. If you challenge grandma having a $3M house paying peanuts for property taxes you are a monster.

If you defend young people that are ready to start a family, "they can kick rocks and move to Bumfuck, Middle-Of-Nowhere, no one is entitled to live in the Bay Area".

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Both are unfortunate situations. Neither should be priced out.

Everyone one who wants to live in SF should be allowed to live in SF regardless of their means. I don’t know how this could work in practice, however.

CA Prop 13 was an unfortunate, short-term bandaid in 1978 that didn't address excessive property taxes for elderly, disabled, and poor people who came after them. It truly was another boomer selfishness moment. The solution is to expand Prop 13 to all who meet low income requirements to make property taxes progressive rather than unreasonable "flat" taxes that punish the poor far more than the rich and moderately rich.

PS: I grew up in south San Jose, graduated from Leland, but can't afford a home anywhere near where I grew up because rich people from all over the world gentrified the Bay Area and boomers went full NIMBY on new developments.

boomers were just coming of age politically when prop 13 passed in 1978. the main culprits were actually the silent generation and older greatest gen homeowners—think postwar suburbanites who had bought in cheap and were now watching their property taxes spike in a period of wild inflation + ballooning home values. boomers were still mostly renters or too young to own, especially in california’s pricey metros.

Incorrect. They were buying homes like my parents (born in 47 and 48) did in San Jose, who benefitted greatly from Prop 13. It was the grandparents of boomers (Jarvis and the older bits of the Greatest Gen) who were initially impacted by rapidly rising property values and property taxes who pushed for it.

Older boomers benefited but were not the culprits as you say, so I don't think you can call it a "boomer selfishness moment" is all.

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