Prop 5’s bonds will hit Bay Area taxpayers hardest, expert says

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RM4 fell off the November ballot, so taxpayers dodged a $48 bn asteroid. This time. But if Prop 5 passes, the $50bn boondoggle could make a direct hit. Marin Post’s Bob Silvestri writes.

Despite the restrictions under Prop. 13, the San Francisco Bay Area has some of the highest, assessed property values in the country. (There are approximately 14 million single-family homes in California, and on average about 425,000 of those have been bought and sold every year since 1978, and assessed at the value of the purchase price, which have continued to increase, dramatically.)

RM4’s tax increases were to be based on those values.

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In addition, those property taxes would continue to increase for the next 20 years and remain in place for the next 52 years.

According to the income/expense spreadsheets provided to 20BillionReasons, by MTC, of the $48.3 billion paid by property owners over the lifetime for this “20 billion dollar” bond measure, $4 billion would go to pay for BAHFA’s overhead and administrative costs and a whopping $28.3 billion would be spent on interest on the debt.

That means that only 1/3rd of the tax payments would have actually gone toward subsidizing housing projects. But, even that number is misleading because it doesn’t count the local administrative costs, which also have to be deducted from the total funds available for construction.

Read the whole thing here.

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Related:

• Is limiting CA’n property taxes inequitable?

• Santa Clara County was (and is) Prop 13 country—despite politicians' opposition

• HJTA’s Susan Shelley: Prop 5’s ballot label under-informs voters because governments just want more tax money (part 2)

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