☆ Khamis: Regional housing tax will inflate local cost of living
The former SJ councilmember and advocate for responsible gov't spending sees trouble in the upcoming tax scheme. He notes how SJ Council blithely supported it without understanding key impacts--especially how the tax will make living here even less affordable. An Opp Now exclusive.
The ink has barely dried on the state’s audit that found that San Jose failed to adequately track $300 million in homelessness spending. Yet the San Jose city council said 'yes' to a $20 billion regional housing bond measure that will tax every property owner in our nine county Bay Area region and will be managed by a new organization called The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA).
The memo was originally set up on the Council's consent calendar, meaning it was going to be approved without discussion before the summer recess.
It was very concerning that such an important decision--one that will affect the cost of living for every person in our 9 county region--did not get the benefit of public scrutiny that it deserves. Most people do not pay attention to the consent calendar because it is usually reserved for mundane procedures like authorizing a street to be paved.
Even more concerning than the lack of public outreach, however, was the spectacle of the city supporting the new tax even though many very important questions (mostly posed by council member Bien Doan) went unanswered. For example, how long will the tax be in effect? What is the cost to administer the bond under this new organization? What kinds of accountability measures will be placed on the funds? How will property owners and renters be affected by the increases in property taxes?
What was not asked at the meeting: how will this new tax affect our small business owners who are renting their commercial, retail or office spaces? Who does this new BAHFA organization answer to if the money is not spent well?
Good intentions often lead to bad results. California has the highest taxes in the United States on gas, yet our roads are a mess and all our public transportation projects double and triple in costs and construction time. Developers in San Jose have to pay huge housing impact fees to build housing and commercial buildings, which results in developers being driven away to areas where there are little to no fees--like Hollister, Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
Even more concerning is that on our November ballot there will be another measure Prop 5 (previously ACA 1) that will make taxes like the $20 billion BAHFA tax much easier to pass because it would reduce the threshold to pass a special tax from 66.67% to 55%. Prop 5, if it passes, will be retroactive to help pass the multibillion dollar tax measure from BAHFA.
Santa Clara County residents have already passed local Housing Bond A, (a $1bn county tax for low income housing) and San Jose passed Measure E, a permanent transfer tax that is supposed to bring in 80 million dollars a year or more for the city to use for housing. So when will we have enough?
Taxes and fees like these always get passed down to home buyers, renters and consumers, resulting in higher rents and a higher cost of living for us all. So it is baffling that the same tools that failed to fix housing problems in the past are being trotted out yet again, with the same empty promises that were proffered the last time these taxes were levied.
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