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“that has kept homeowners’ property taxes artificially low]

as opposed to artificially high. LOL”

Right you are. A left wing newspaper peddling BS. I have lived in CA for 47 years. Before Prop 13, I owned a home in LA County. In areas where home prices were increasing, the county assessor was re-assessing homes every year. So, we were seeing huge annual increases in our property taxes. It was horrible.

Howard Jarvis came up with Prop 13 in the late 1970s, and it passed by a wide margin. It saved many folks from having to sell their homes because of the tax burden. Prop 13 allows annual assessment increases of up to 2% depending on the rate of inflation. So, existing homeowners are protected. The one negative is that when a home sells, for the new owner, the taxes are based upon the sales price, and those taxes also can increase by up to 2% a year. So, there is a negative for the new owners of properties sold that have increased in sales value. For instance, a new homeowner living next to a long time homeowner could be paying substantially more in property taxes.

All that being said, there is another law that allows for the assessed value of homes to decrease if home prices decrease. So, right after the great recession of 2008-09 when home sale prices dropped by up to 40%, those homeowners who had purchased their homes during the rapid price increases experienced between 2000 and 2007 have experienced a major reduction in their property taxes. I am one of those homeowners, and I am paying substantially less than I was paying in 2005 when we purchased our home.

With regard to this proposed law to benefit those over 55, that law already exists in a number of California counties that adopted such a regulation a few years after Prop 13 passed. If you live in one of those counties and move to a more expensive home in that county, you can keep your existing amount assessed on the former home and have it applied to the newly purchased home. This is for 55 and above only, and only in certain counties.