A similar thing is happening with my mother who is over 80. I've warned her about a 66% raise in her property taxes and looked into senior exemptions. But it turns out that if the home is over $300,000 (which just about all are in Arlington Virginia) there is no exemption or even partial exemption. So the county clearly has the situation rigged.
I've heard bitter seniors complaining about this situation, but they keep voting in the tax increasers every year.
Same thing here in greater Baltimore. The net worth cut-off in our county is $200,00 -- so a senior can't qualify for a real estate tax discount if they have a car plus an average townhome, much less enough savings to get through an illness.
I've heard bitter seniors complaining about this situation, but they keep voting in the tax increasers every year.
A friend of mine used to work for Baltimore County helping senior citizens fill out their absentee ballots. While about 70% of the seniors he dealt with were whites in nursing homes and assisted living, about 90% of the people like him who helped fill out the ballots were black, and presumably Democrat. He said the seniors would vote "yes" on every spending bill, no matter how much money or how vaguely worded, and if they said they didn't know who was running, they would just ask him to fill out the ballot straight Democrat, or tell him to leave the ballot so their son or daughter could fill it out, effectively giving those adult children a second vote. The old people even voted "yes" on gay marriage last time around, which is when he quit. He finally realized that this "program" of the Board of Elections is just another way to get people too mentally disabled to understand the issues to vote Democrat.