Posted on 08/27/2017 5:29:27 PM PDT by rey
Recently elected Healdsburg City Councilwoman Leah Gold says she has no gripes with people who want to have a second home in her desirable town in the heart of Wine Country. But she also believes they should pay more for the privilege.
It’s the empty homes held for investment or occasional use that Gold is targeting because she says they diminish housing stock, drive up real estate prices and alter the face of the community.
She said it could take the form of an annual 1 percent tax on the assessed value of a home if it is neither someone’s principal residence, nor leased to a full-time tenant, similar to a tax that’s levied in Vancouver, British Columbia. Healdsburg voters would have a final say over any such proposed tax.
“Empty houses can’t contribute to a community project. They don’t send their children to schools,” she said. “They don’t shop at local stores. They can’t lend a helping hand to a neighbor.”
Sky-high housing costs have been a perennial concern in many California communities, including Healdsburg, which has some of the priciest real estate in Sonoma County. The city prohibits vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods.
There are many factors that drive up costs, including the price of land, growth controls and environmental regulations. But second homes snapped up by wealthy individuals are seen as exacerbating the problem.
“Many residents are frustrated that second-home purchases continue to eat up our housing stock,” Healdsburg resident Bruce Abramson told the council.
“It’s a major problem if there are empty, or rarely used second homes at a time when people are being driven from their homes,” said housing activist Robert Nuese.
(Excerpt) Read more at pressdemocrat.com ...
The important thing to remember is that all problems can be solved by TAX TAX TAX TAX TAX and REGULATIONS / ORDINANCES, of course.
See? It’s easy!
Healdsburg....couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of fascists.
L
NO woman should have two fur coats until every woman has ONE!
Otto Piffl
Such nonsense. They are still subject to local property taxes, whether they are occupied or not.
But, then, she's probably a left-wing wacko like yourselves, so suck it up and pay the tax.
Let’s give a great big shout out to GOVERNMENT! Everybody loves being financially raped. We keep asking for more.
According to city-data.com, mean price of a detached home in Healdsburg is $640,012. This would be yearly tax of $6,400 on top of property taxes the owner is already paying.
http://www.city-data.com/city/Healdsburg-California.html
Utah already has such a policy. Primary homeowners get a 45% rebate on property taxes, meaning that secondary homeowners pay almost double. Since the main use of property taxes is to pay for schools, and since secondary homeowners don’t use the schools, this policy may seem perverse. This usual answer is: They can afford it.
Interesting she mentioned "children to schools". The school tax is by far the largest part of my property tax. If anything, houses without children should get a discount on property tax for not imposing a very high cost on the community.
Whatever second home tax is put in place will be met by a decrease in home prices. The market makes a way to equalize things.
A few years ago, because lots of people buy homes to put their kids thru the great schools only to move out when empty-nested, a local nutjob selectman wanted a realestate “exit” tax. It never got passed, but was wisely criticized as a big damper on home values.
And if they put no children into the local schools, that’s a cost local government doesn’t have to bear, while recieving the tax income. I fail to see a problem here, yet this foolish council member has conjured one up out of this somehow.
The real problem is likely an unwillingness to rezone local agricultural land for residential uses, thus making more housing available, thus lowering prices. I’m fear basic economic concepts like supply and demand might elude her too, if she thinks getting tax revenue for schools, while no children go to school from 2nd houses, is a problem.
One of my sisters lives nearby, up there in wine country, multi-million dollar homes. She's conservative, but laments that most of her neighbors are liberals with the idiot mentality that goes along with liberalism.
The real answer is: secondary homeowners don’t vote.
Or could this be a slick way of discouraging homeowners to rent to, shall we say, “undesirables” who might turn their neighborhoods into ‘hoods? Anti discrimination laws are for thee but no for me?
Unless they’re Democrats...
My wife’s cousin lives in Half Moon Bay.
Our visits to them are interesting to say the least.
L
I actually lived in Healdburg briefly back in the 1960s.
It was a quaint small town, and much more neighborly than it seems to have grown to be.
It was so neighborly that when some fruit crop on nearby farms had to be picked, they closed the schools so the kids could go help get the crop in and earn some extra money.
My brother-in-law worked at a local market as a butcher, and I worked at a forestry department fire station up at Cloverdale.
Today the median home price in Healdsburg is 744K and there are plenty of million dollar homes in and around it.
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