PropertyTaxReform

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.

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.

Americans and Golf, and the local assessor

For the past few days, an article entitled "More Americans Are Giving Up Golf" has been on the NYT's "most emailed" list.  A few excerpts:

“The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, a real estate developer. “There just isn’t enough time. Men won’t spend a whole day away from their family anymore.”

The five men who met here at the Wind Watch Golf Club a couple of weeks ago, golf aficionados all, wondered out loud about the reasons. Was it the economy? Changing family dynamics? A glut of golf courses? A surfeit of etiquette rules — like not letting people use their cellphones for the four hours it typically takes to play a round of 18 holes?

Or was it just the four hours?

Here on Long Island, where there are more than 100 private courses, golf course owners have tried various strategies: coupons and trial memberships, aggressive marketing for corporate and charity tournaments, and even some forays into the wedding business.

Rodney B. Warnick, a professor of recreation studies and tourism at the University of Massachusetts, said that the aging population of the United States was probably a part of the problem, too, and that “there is a younger generation that is just not as active.”

But golf, a sport of long-term investors — both those who buy the expensive equipment and those who build the princely estates on which it is played — has always seemed to exist in a world above the fray of shifting demographics. Not anymore.

Surveys sponsored by the foundation have asked players what keeps them away. “The answer is usually economic,” Mr. Kass said. “No time. Two jobs. Real wages not going up. Pensions going away. Corporate cutbacks in country club memberships — all that doom and gloom stuff.”

In many parts of the country, high expectations for a golf bonanza paralleling baby boomer retirements led to what is now considered a vast overbuilding of golf courses.

Between 1990 and 2003, developers built more than 3,000 new golf courses in the United States, bringing the total to about 16,000. Several hundred have closed in the last few years, most of them in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and South Carolina, according to the foundation.

“Years ago, men thought nothing of spending the whole day playing golf — maybe Saturday and Sunday both,” said Mr. Rocchio, the public relations consultant, who is also the New York regional director of the National Golf Course Owners Association. “Today, he is driving his kids to their soccer games. Maybe he’s playing a round early in the morning. But he has to get back home in time for lunch.”

This struck me as I thought about one of the things I see in my town's property tax assessments.  The private golf clubs have been given very generous (low) assessments.  Where surrounding land is selling for $400,000 per acre, the 3 private golf courses are assessed at $140,000 per acre (that's the 100% figure, not the CT 70%).

What a kind gift to give those who own or benefit from these private parks!  But I've got a real problem with asking the low-income homeowners of my town to subsidize those who  can afford expensive club memberships.  No, more precisely, I've got a problem with all the non-members -- probably 99% of the property-owners in town -- being asked to subsidize the club members. [And the golf course assessments aren't the worst assessment gift in my town.  I'll post on that one soon.]

Florida: How Should We Tax Ourselves?

Educators: tax plan skepticism

link: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080319/NEWS/803190317
The article reports the reactions of teachers' and school administrators' organizations to proposed property tax reductions in Florida. I want to focus on a fairly short section of the article:

The plan is intended to stimulate the economy by making homes more affordable and allowing people to keep more spending money.

Under it, lawmakers would have three choices to recoup the lost funds:

• cut spending,
  
• expand the sales tax to include other items or services, or
  
• raise money through a new source.

So much money would need to be raised that proponents expect lawmakers would be forced to close sales tax exemptions on everything from bottled water to pet food to sky boxes in sports arenas.