PropertyTaxReform

The Taxpayer at 72nd and Madison

In a recent NYT, there is an article about the building on the southwest corner of 72nd and Madison in NYC. Twice in the article and once in the caption to the photos, the building is referred to as a "taxpayer" or "taxpayer-style building."

The article describes the 2 buildings which have occupied the 48' by 100' lot on the sw corner of 72nd and Madison: the first was a 5-story mansion built in 1894, which was occupied by an ex-wife of William K. Vanderbilt II.  On the northwest corner stood Louis Tiffany's grand house, and Gertrude Rhinelander was building her chateau, now the Ralph Lauren store, on the southeast corner.  The mansion remained a private home until 1951, when it was

... replaced with a two-story-high taxpayer-style building, designed by Boak & Raad with severe simplicity.

Ralph Lauren acquired the old Rhinelander mansion for its flagship store in 1986, and seven years later took over the taxpayer on the site of the Cutting house. It has operated a store there since then.

Bob Herbert's 3/11 column, Sharing the Pain: The "Near-Poor"

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/opinion/11herbert.html

It begins with the statement,

Now that the economic crunch is reaching those near the top of the pyramid, there is finally a sense that the U.S. is facing a real crisis.

The article goes on to talk about the large group of  "near-poor" in America -- the 60 million people who are "just one notch above the official poverty line," with incomes that range from $20,000 to $40,000 for a family of four.

We have always gotten a distorted picture of how well Americans were doing from politicians and the media. The U.S. has a population of 300 million. Thirty-seven million, many of them children, live in poverty. Close to 60 million are just one notch above the official poverty line. These near-poor Americans live in households with annual incomes that range from $20,000 to $40,000 for a family of four.

It is disgraceful that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, nearly a third of the people are poor or near-poor.

You can read the statistics, expressed in terms of income multiples of the Federal Poverty Guideline here.  I think you'll find them moving.

It isn't that I don't agree there is a problem -- readers of this blog likely know that  -- but must point out that defining the problem this way, as the authors of "The Missing Class" do, misses the point that $20,000 or $40,000 for a family of 4 in rural Alabama is very different from $20,000 to $40,000 in New York City or San Francisco, or any of our other major metropolitan areas, where the vast majority of us live. [See data about the cost of living in America's low-cost counties, and in America's major cities.]

Fortunes Made in Real Estate

Americans have a tendency to respect those who are "self-made men." This seems to include people whose fortunes have been made in real estate.  The latest example in the news is the outgoing governor of New York, whose father, Bernard Spitzer, reportedly has a $500 million portfolio of properties, most or all in NYC.

I have nothing against real estate developers in their role as developers.  They bring large amounts of money and multiple talents to bear to create new modern buildings on sites previously occupied by more modest buildings suitable to another decade or century. And when they build they generally create the venues in which dozens, even hundreds, of entrepreneurial visions can be made into reality, and where thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of people can be employed in a single building.  Appropriate development of choice sites, served by existing infrastructure such as NYC's elaborate transportation system and things as prosaic as city water, sanitary sewers, stormwater runoff, and all the other systems that are paid for by we-the-people: schools, public safety, public health, libraries, courts, hospitals, etc., means that specialized work can take in the center of the central business district, conducted by people who come from a 360 degree radius.  It minimizes sprawl on the fringe, and makes the economy work more smoothly.

But there are other facets of the real estate business that I think are "opportunities for plunder" that should be restructured to serve the common good instead of the private good.  This involves a revision of our notions of what is right, what is just, what is rightly private property and what legitimately belongs to the commons.

Affordable housing -- for all of us. What policies promote it?

Link: http://www.sun-herald.com/Newsstory.cfm?pubdate=030808&story=tp1ch5.htm&folder=NewsArchive2

A front-page article in the 3/8/08 Charlotte (County, FL) Sun entitled "Not Affordable Enough" speaks to some interesting and important issues regarding Florida's housing.  A few excerpts:

The current downturn in residential real estate sales has created the closest thing to a buyer's market Florida has seen since the 1990s.

While that might be great news for a Northern couple looking to retire in Punta Gorda or Port Charlotte with their life savings, Charlotte County's median home price -- about $175,000 according to recent Florida Association of Realtors figures -- is still a barrier for many local wage earners ...

Despite North Port's reputation as a haven for working families, the median sale price in the Sarasota-Bradenton market remains about $260,000

Referring to recent problems in the housing market,

"It's a blip on the screen really, and in a year, we're going to be thankful that we did some investing in affordable housing," said Ron Thomas, executive director of Enterprise Punta Gorda, the city's economic development bureau. "When everybody says that there's plenty of affordable housing, we have to qualify that by saying that there is plenty of affordable housing for people who are in the 80 percent or above the median income. This doesn't have any positive effect for anybody in the 30 to 80 percent median income bracket."

"Even as low as (housing) has come down, it still might not suit firefighters, police, and school teachers. They're still struggling," said Bill Albers, Punta Gorda city councilman. Albers is the council's liaison to the Punta Gorda Housing Authority.

Landholders, windfalls, productive effort and community revenue

I attempted to post this response to a blog, and ran into a technical error.  But even without the post to which it was responding -- which praised the so-called FairTax -- I though it worth sharing here. 

I'm still in Henry George's camp. Why tax the results of individual human effort -- stealing from the individual, or for that matter the corporation that which he/it created -- BEFORE collecting the economic value of that which the community created?

Financing Municipal Spending through Sales Taxes: an Inferior "Solution"

Chicago will soon have the highest sales tax of any major city in the US.  Not the highest sales tax in the US -- there is a town in northeastern Alabama, Arab, which imposes sales taxes as high as 12% -- but the highest of any major city.  (Alabama's sales taxes -- designed to place the maximum burden on poor people, while making life easier for upper-income residents, particularly the property-owners -- typically tax even groceries!)   An AP article reports:

Among the things Chicago wants to be known for, having the highest total sales taxes of any major U.S. city is probably not one of them.

But that's what it's getting after the Cook County Board voted Saturday to double the county sales tax to 1.75 percent. When added to the city's sales tax, the county' increase has the cumulative effect of setting a 10.25 percent sales tax on goods bought in Chicago.

When the county rate increase takes effect in November, someone buying $100 worth of merchandise in Chicago would pay $110.25.

The rates in New York and Los Angeles are below 8.5 percent. The next highest rate in the country is in Memphis, Tenn., at 9.25 percent.

The tax increase is expected to add about $426 million annually to county coffers, and the money is meant to close a projected $234 million deficit. The budget is also designed to create more than 1,000 new county jobs.

Private (homeowner) Associations, their Private Beaches, and the Local Assessor

I live in a small city within easy commuting distance of New York City.  It includes some lovely waterfront communities (with property values to match), a downtown with many corporations, a 1- and 2-acre zone, neighborhoods that include children who collectively speak 30 or more different languages and many whose families live below the "self-sufficiency level", multiple high schools, a few magnet schools.

There are a number of subdivisions which have some common property, and it turns out that the local assessor has been very generous with them.  Is this legitimate, or is it a privilege (private law, for the benefit of a few at the expense of the rest of the community)?   I can't see how it is anything but a privilege, a free lunch for special people. (To which I say, eschew privilege!!)

I'll start with the waterfront communities.  There are several of them.  Within one, there are are several private associations.  No gates, no signs, except the "no trespassing" signs on their private beaches; other than the beach signs and the real estate ads, which invariably mention "deeded beach rights," they don't seem any different from other streets on their peninsula.  But each of the three sub-neighborhoods has some private property on the waterfront.   

Redirecting Sprawl

The Hartford Courant published an editorial yesterday entitled "Let's Redirect Sprawl."  The title is taken from a statement by Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell.

The editorial says, in part,

Advocates for smart growth often cite the need for "infill development." But "redirect sprawl" gets the message across better. One of the aspects of smart growth that is sometimes forgotten is — growth. To redirect sprawl is emphatically to keep growing, but in places that don't waste energy, add to traffic congestion or ruin the view.

How do we do this?  The editorial doesn't say.  It does mention the underused land in our cities:

That should be part of a strong and focused effort to redirect sprawl to the empty and underused sites that pockmark nearly all of our urban areas. The central part of Hartford, for example, has acres of land that is severely underused as surface parking.  

It usually does cost more to build in town centers and transit corridors. But it is the right thing to do. If we rebuild cities to a healthy urban density, we won't have to drive as much, and thus will save energy and cause less pollution. Cities will be safer and more walkable. There will be less pressure to develop the last of our farms.

"People want to live in cities, if you do it right," Mr. Rendell said.

This ought to be the next phase of the smart-growth movement in Connecticut, and Mr. Rendell may have provided the catchphrase.

Assessments that favor the big landholders

It is apparently standard practice for assessors in some places to value large parcels of land very generously.  I'm not talking about special valuations for farms or forests (even if they are long-fallow and in areas where land sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre).  Rather, I am talking about valuations which treat the portion of an owner's land beyond the minimum zoning size as if it were worth perhaps 10% of its real value.

This happens in fairly dense suburban neighborhoods and in places where much larger lots are the minimum.    

Connecticut: Downtown Sprawl, Property Assessments and Getting the Incentives Right

I live in small city within commuting distance of New York City. For the 32 years I've been here, there has been a 4.3 acre hole-in-the-ground within about 1/4 mile of the city's "100% location."  It is surrounded by a chain link fence, and bordered by a shopping mall, a hotel, some apartments and some office buildings.  It is within walking distance of a major railroad station and two interstate highway exits.   It is even identified in the city's assessment database as the hole in the ground.  It has weed trees and concrete-lined puddles.  I seem to recall that at least one person has drowned when their car ended up in deep water on the property.

When I moved here, the tallest building in town was 22 stories. Today, the tallest building is still that 22-story office building.  It sits a bit to the north of the geographic center of downtown.  We currently have under construction a 37-story luxury condo complex ... on 1/2 acre at the northwest corner of the downtown ... and a 39-story hotel and condo complex on 3 acres, solidly in the downtown area and close to the highway and railroad.