The Average Property Tax Rate

Facing tough budget decisions in advance, various cities, and county have two options: raise taxes or reduce services. Furthermore, there has not been a tax increase in a long period, county officials have alleged. They recognized this day would come. The administrator distressed and diagnosed the circumstances where they provide the primary inspection and repairs.

value of all property stood at $15.6 billion. ' As of tax year 2005, owner-occupied residential property accounted

As seen in Chapter 15 of Real Estate Principles by Charles J. Jacobus, property tax is a large source of income for local governments. When property taxes are not paid, a lien is placed on the property. If property taxes are not paid, this gives the government the right to seize the property. This is currently happening to Bill Davies, a developer from Chicago, Illinois.

With Massachusetts State spending on affordable housing and open space at a historic low, when considered as a percentage of the total budget, the production of dwelling units and the conservation of land have become the responsibility of local government, but cities and towns do not build housing, except in rare circumstances. As well they do not routinely buy expensive tracts of open land,

In 2011, the Los Angeles Human Right to Housing Collective joined together with citywide residents to protest unfair housing practices, and increasing rents at Los Angeles City Hall. Over the past four years, Los Angeles residents have seen rapid increases in rent, which is leading to more and more people moving out of L.A. in the hopes of finding more affordable living arrangements. The three percent rental increases that Los Angeles residents are accustomed to have been climbing this past year, and in 2016 many Angelenos could be seeing a four or maybe even five percent cost of living increase. Studies from the U.S. Census will show that Los Angeles renters occupy not even 50 percent of Los Angeles county housing units. In comparison to the percentage LA renters are taking home per paycheck, it is now becoming more affordable to buy property in Los Angeles, rather than rent.

Whats is Prop. 13? According to the article, Prop.13 in California, 35 Years Later, by Noah Glyn and Scott Drenkard and publish by The Tax Foundation, they mention "California voters passed Proposition 13, which cut property taxes down to 1 percent (for both homestead and commercial property) and limited the growth rate of future assessments to 2 percent. Once properties are sold, though, new assessments are conducted to value the properties at their market value"(paragraph one, June 06,2013), in order words, Prop. 13 was intended to lower taxes on home property and prevent any more taxes to be impose on Californians. Furthermore, they elaborate "requires taxes raised by local governments for a designated or special purpose to be approved by two-thirds of the voters,” and all tax increases to be passed by two-thirds of both houses of the

During the 1970’s, Connecticut was a very prosperous state with growing numbers of minorities. Many of these minorities would tend to live in the same neighborhoods which would lead to other races, like whites, leaving an area and moving to a new area away from these minorities. We learned about white flight in The Children in Room E4, but this has been relevant for many decades. These whites may have not moved out of state, but just away from the minority neighborhoods to places like the suburbs. This tended to cause property values to decrease in the minority neighborhoods, making it cheaper for more minorities to move in, but also harder for the minorities to move to areas where white people may be living like the suburbs. With decreased property values beginning to happen, the property taxes were also beginning to decrease. This is what led to the development of the case Horton v. Meskill. Also during this time, the United States was barely a decade old from all of the segregation it had experienced during the 1960’s. the segregation had an influence on why whites were moving away from the minorities, which was causing these public school property tax funding’s to be low. Even though segregation de jure was outlawed at this time, there were still people living by segregation de facto. The people did not realize this at this time in the 1970’s, but it eventually built up momentum and became relevant in the Connecticut court case Sheff v. O’Neill.

Property taxes in California have been a controversial issue for very many years. In mid 1978, approximately ⅔ of voters in California passed proposition 13. Before it had been passed, property taxes increased almost annually according to the assessed value of the property. In the 1970s, there was a remarkable growth in the real estate market and the value of homes rapidly went up. Property values were escalating substantially since assessors had to keep assessed values current. On the other hand, increments in the evaluated value were not made annually. Therefore, this led to a huge tax shock for homeowners after every few years.

Chinatown, Olvera Street, and Compton all contributed to culturally diversity and the expansion of Los Angeles. Although Los Angeles has become rich in cultures, its evolution did not go without racial tensions and segregation. With the arrival of blacks from the south, white-Los Angeles did always recognize the minority community. Angelenos did not always embrace diversity with pride, but perhaps the sad part is not the fact that racial segregation took place, but the fact that it was not created by just the individual, but also by the organization. Federal programs like the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Homeowner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) divided up Los Angeles into a complex socio-economic racial-class system. The influences of the local level influenced the federal level and revolutionized the finance industry. (Avila, lecture 2/5/02) These federal organizations blatantly labeled minorities as derogatory, uneducated, second-class citizens that brought down property value in “white” neighborhoods. Latinos and Black were often labeled as a “minority problem” and even as a “disease” on official HOLC documents. The HOLC implemented strict government guidelines and kept maps of white neighborhoods confidential. It also devised a formal and uniform style of appraising homes by breaking neighborhoods into race classifications by letter. As Waldie states, “The Montana Land Company made it clear that lots were

For Californians, a trip out-of-state comes with many surprises, one of them being gas prices. As any amateur economist knows the reason for the staggering prices is due to additional taxes added on by the state. California being the proactive state that it is has initiated multiple regulations on fuel and not one of them is forgiving to buyers. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, gas prices in the state are well above the national average due to the harsh regulations of the government. People respond to incentives, and the residents of California make decisions by comparing costs and benefits.

Property tax is a charge on property that the owner is responsible for paying. The tax is constructed on the value of the property one owns and is often estimated by local or municipal governments. When paying a property tax bill, the money goes to a number of important programs, city employees, police officers, firefighters, and public works departments also receive pay. The property tax money is used to pay for parks, traffic construction, street lights, sidewalks, and public transportation. Imposing a cap on property taxes would not only impact communities but it will also create several major problems. Cities would be affected and unable to hire employees in the public safety, since salaries and other benefits would be increased. A cap would reduce job establishment and damage the state's economic growth. The cap would also create more traffic problems by limiting

Housing allocation determinations and planning review powers were also passed down from the state to Councils of Government (COG), which served as regional planning commissions that were thought to be closer to municipal governments and less likely to be perceived as encroaching on local land use decision-making (Ramsey-Musolf para. 7). The need for regional, as opposed to decentralized housing policies, is significant: shortages of housing in one area simply push housing burdens to adjacent cities, exacerbating statewide levels of inequality. Unfortunately, a study cited in the Journal of Planning Literature found that this well-intentioned legislation has only created a production imbalance between LIH and MRH: though collective housing element compliance may have increased between 1990 and 1997, a sample of 53 California municipalities only produced 32% of its

Taxes have always been a contentious issue of debate in the United States; furthermore it is exacerbated by the specific philosophy of individuals, states, and regions. Too be clearer, nobody enjoys paying taxes, however it is the cost we pay for having civilization. Nevertheless, selfishness creeps in to many individuals who feel no particular benefit. Taxes have a real way of polarizing many people from different socio-economic backgrounds, because a tax is inexorably linked to a person’s belief-system. For instance, in the context of social welfare policy liberals are inclined to feel that the tax-burden should be heaped on individuals who have benefited the most from “the system”. On the other hand, we have conservatives who feel they did not receive any support, and all that is necessary is hard work and perseverance to succeed. I am not suggesting either one is correct; it is only a simple illustration to show the relation between pocketbook and personal belief. I hope studying the tax structures of New Jersey and Alabama will give me insight they both reconcile their political beliefs with their individual tax structures.

California’s housing situation is severe compared to the rest of the United States. California is included in the top three states with the most “housing cost burdened individuals” (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2015). In a list of 20 cities where rents were highest compared to income, 10 of the 20 cities were in California with Los Angeles, CA topping the list (Dewan, 2014). Opponents might say that households in poverty could never afford housing due to their impoverished state but poverty measures of California show that the abnormally high cost of housing in California makes matters more severe and causes the amount of households that are severely cost afflicted to increase. Furthermore, when poverty measures take into account California’s uniquely expensive and insufficient housing supply, the results show that housing costs contribute significantly to poverty. For example, when housing costs were included in the California Poverty Measure as well as federal Supplemental Poverty Measure, the poverty rates rose substantially (Wimer, Mattingly, & Levin, 2013) (Short, 2015). And when high housing costs were artificially substituted with low housing costs, poverty rates significantly dropped (Bohn, Danielson, & Levin, 2013). And it’s not just the poor who are affected! Even those who are moderate income earners are becoming financially burdened by high housing costs. Those who are moderately well off compared to low income earners are financially burdened by rent costs in expensive cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University,

Affordable housing has become the paramount issue of cities and dense urban areas. San Francisco is the posterchild of an unaffordable city that regardless of immense investment from blue chip firms like Google, Facebook, and their ilk of startups evaluated at $1 billion or more, policymakers and elected officials must wrestle with the housing affordability crisis that is considered endogenous to swaths of homelessness and record statistics on crime. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has made affordable housing the centerpiece of his legislation and championed the cause as a social justice issue—neighborhoods must remain affordable to maintain diversity for all races, ethnicities, and low-income families. A small sample of 827 New Yorkers by the NY1-Baruch College City Poll found the main concern of respondents was affordable housing while crime, jobs, and homelessness were peripheral problems (Cuza, 2016). The public discourse on how to address housing across the United States has pointed to negative externalities that surround rent-regulation and homeownership. Conversely, for this essay I will present various cases in order to illustrate the housing crunch is influenced less by housing and land regulations, or antagonistic homeowners but is induced by global market forces.