Conference of the Council of Georgist Organizations
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nadine Stoner
[Reprinted from
GroundSwell, July-August 2005]
Your GroundSwell editor, Nadine Stoner, has compiled
the following report from transcribed notes taken of the August 4,
2005 panel in Philadelphia, PA. at the Council of Georgist
Organizations conference.
Joshua Vincent, director of the Center for the Study of Economics
in Philadelphia, introduced the panelists with, "You will hear
today why a group of very diverse people with a very diverse set of
responsibilities in their lives have accepted the idea that land
value taxation is going to be an essential part of any future that
Philadelphia has." Josh Vincent is also director of the Henry
George Foundation of America, which had sent out 150,000 letters to
homeowners and swamped city hall for a hearing on land value
taxation.
Jonathan Saidel has been elected to his 4th term as City
Controller.for the city of Philadelphia. The City Controller's
office is unique in that it is the bully pulpit and investigatory
body and an accounting and financial body all at the same time. It
is up to the City Controller to find out what is being spent in the
city, how things are spent, but also because of who is in the office
of City Controller currently, it is a body that explores the
possibilities of what can make the city better instead of the
disease of just about any city east of the Mississippi and actually
most American cities. He is not seeking re-election as City
Controller; he has other plans (see www. Saidel2000.com)
Diane Lucidi is the Executive Vice President of the Greater
Philadelphia Association of Realtors, GPAR for short. Diane is
essentially in charge of the legislative program of the Realtors
here and in a lot of state issues in Harrisburg, and Diane has been
on board for land value taxation for a very long time indeed.
James Tayoun has championed the land value tax since he was a
Philadelphia councilman in the 1980s when he was the ramrod, trying
to push the land value tax through City Council and get the Wilson
Goode administration to adopt the land value tax. He is the
publisher of The Philadelphia Public Record newspaper.
Kathy Harris is a neighborhood activist and for four years has
been the president of the Greater Olney Community Council, which is
a neighborhood in the north central part of Philadelphia. She has
seen her solid working class neighborhood of Olney fall apart from
crime and vandalism. She has been active in neighborhood Town Watch
and national Night Out. Kathy's activism is simply trying to
preserve her neighborhood, of what used to be a great place and can
be again. Kathy picked up her first copy of Progress & Poverty
at the Schalkenbach exhibit table during the conference.
Brett Mandel is the Executive Director of Philadelphia Forward
which is the umbrella organization of groups that are pushing for
overall tax reform in the city of Philadelphia -- reduction of
business taxes, fair assessments, land value taxation and a whole
host of other tools that need to be used in Philadelphia.. Brett for
years was Director of Finance and Public Analysis in the City
Controller's office, and he took the step of hiring Bruno Moser
several years ago. When the fight for tax reform became hot, Bret
left the security of city bureaucracy to become Executive Director
of Philadelphia Forward, a 501.(c)(3) that has been working to get
tax reform implemented. With reassessment coming up, Philadelphia
Forward believes it provides an opportunity for equalized values and
land value taxation.
JONATHAN SAIDEL: Let me give you a little history about what I
have found in politics, which is why I am so happy that we have here
a representative of the community of real estate and a neighborhood
activist, because in the end unless you have neighborhood activists
involved, government will do nothing for you. And all these
statements are all bi-partisan. About 25 years ago when I began in
politics as a volunteer, not thinking that I would even run for
office, there were people in both political parties that I could
look up to.
Even though I may disagree with some of the issues of a
candidate, I could go home knowing in my heart and soul that though
we disagreed we disagreed politely and that the other candidate and
the other individual really believed in those issues and felt that
they were for the greater good of all in the community if they were
implemented for positive change in both the city and in the state
and in a national election. Today I can't say that. Today nobody in
the local, state, or federal government wants to even think outside
of the box. They know there is a problem but they are not willing to
think about alternative ways to do away with that problem and give
us all the opportunity to move forward in a positive direction.
In Philadelphia when I have come up with recommendations, what I
try to do is first say to those people that I am addressing, can you
accept the fact that there is a problem. And most of the time
everyone recognizes that there is a particular problem in
Philadelphia. And then I come up with a list of recommendations and
historically in Philadelphia people say no, those are not the proper
answers to those problems. So I always say if you don't like my
recommendations, give me your recommendations. And 99% of the time
there is no response to that. For years I have been talking about
the uneven way that we do real estate taxes in Philadelphia. It has
always amazed me when somebody wants to improve their home, to fix
their roof or to add a porch, that we raise their taxes as if they
are correspondingly going to make more money because they fixed
their personal residence. We have spent almost $500 million tearing
down half the city of Philadelphia, but every person that fixes
their home on their block, every business that builds additional
stories on the limited space of the land that they own, we increase
their real estate taxes and effectively create a disincentive for
people to acquire wealth by increasing their property values. It is
an amazing thing, so I have complained about that for over a period
of time.
And then several years ago a young man named Bruno Moser, who is
in Viet Nam now, talked to me about the land tax. And in the end if
someone fixes their home, and increases the value of their home,
they save the street that they live on. And the more people that fix
their home save not only the street that they live on but the
community that they live in. And the more people in the community
that save the community, save a city. And yet in Philadelphia for
the last number of years, we have had things called land banking,
where companies will come in from outside of Philadelphia and they
buy up large tracts of land, allow the property to decay and their
real estate taxes will come down every year as the property decays
because the property sitting on that land is not worth anything, and
they will completely destroy a complete neighborhood. Then when the
people leave, they will do what they want to do. In the meantime a
place like Philadelphia suffers. But if we had a land tax I could
charge them money after money because if they are going to be
obliterators of the future of this city, they should at least pay
the piper. We are land locked by suburban counties that surround
Philadelphia and we are river locked. We are landlocked of 120
square miles. Land is unique, and we need the best opportunity to
utilize that land for all the people that live here in Philadelphia
and for the business community that we want to bring in. And the
only way we can do that is to make sure that those who want to build
get a benefit and those that don't want to build on the land that
they own have a disincentive to continue that horrible practice. The
land tax system is the only way that can begin. And it is the core
part of what I want to bring to Philadelphia besides the
reorganization of the government, besides the reduction of our cost
of government, beyond the fact that I want to reduce a variety of
other taxes that make it so onerous. In Philadelphia anywhere within
a 10-minute ride, you are outside our taxing jurisdiction. The way
our taxes are done in Philadelphia, people can live outside of
Philadelphia, not pay most of the taxes that exist in Philadelphia,
and just travel down our expressways and our byways to take
advantage of the cultural and wonderful opportunities here in
Philadelphia that bring people here.
The reality is that if you want to run for high political office
then you have a responsibility to do what you think is right. For
too long in the worlds that we come from politicians are elected
from both political parties whose main aim is to stay in office.
Make sure that your voices are heard. Drexel University did a study
that showed that if the land tax was placed in existence in
Philadelphia, the average homeowner would have a $100 reduction in
their real estate tax. So it was not just me that said it as a
politician, but it was a University with high status within the
Delaware Valley and within the United States. We have to think
outside of the box; we have to move forward. Information is a
valuable tool as you move forward. It is the ammunition against
those naysayers that say that the best days of a place like
Philadelphia were yesterday. I am very proud that the Constitution
and the Declaration of Independence were created here by our
founding fathers. As proud as I am of that history, I want to be
proud of the future that this city can bring for the people that
live here, people that live in the surrounding area, the people that
I need to bring here for the city to move in the right direction.
The land tax will be part of that revolution of creating an
environment to improve their lives and not be destroyed by our
taxing authority because they want to improve their lives.
Asked by a audience questioner about the upcoming city
reassessment, Saidel responded that 90% of it is residential, that
is going to be a sensitive issue to people mostly with fixed incomes
who will not be able to pay the additional taxes . Mayor Street said
to me that if you (Saidel) are elected (in the upcoming campaign
Josh Vincent alluded to) there is going to be more money for me as
mayor of Philadelphia. I replied that is not really how it works. If
you continually raise taxes there won't be anybody here but me
because I have to live here. No political people are the same, even
if they are raised by the same parent. We have to be involved and we
have to influence decisions that people make. In the end if we
don't, we get the government we pay for.
DIANE LUCIDI. Real estate is about location, location, location.
In the past several years Philadelphia has continued to lose
population, whether it is residences or businesses, and if there is
no one left here in the city who is going to buy the property? So we
approached City Council members and the City Controller's office and
we asked for a ten year tax abatement. There are three different
types of abatements. One was for commercial/industrial properties.
One was for new construction, and the third was a thank-you for the
residents who chose to stay in the city so that if you fixed your
property, whatever part of the property that you fixed was not going
to be taxed for ten years. We caught a lot of grief with the
administration, some Council members, but all in all, we won and it
has proven to be extremely successful.
All that led me to meet Brett Mandel and Bruno Moser, who the
Controller alluded to earlier, and Josh Vincent. They told me about
the land value tax, and my immediate response was, well that is a
no-brainer. Why don't we have that? From the conception of a
no-brainer here we are three years later and we still can't get this
through. My realtors believe that the land value tax for
Philadelphia is a silver bullet. It must makes sense. It is not the
structure that is worth the money. It is the land. Location,
location, location. We have boundaries, a river on one side, a river
on the other side, and Philadelphia has a lot of abandoned
properties. One of the problems that I see for Philadelphia is that
the City has the largest land bank. They don't even know what they
own. They called me to ask who owns the property at 123 South Third
Street. I said, you have a Real Estate Dept. Those guys are paid to
tell you that. They know we have the Multiple Listing Service. I can
tell them whoever owns whatever property but why should I? It is
their property. So whether PHA [Philadelphia Housing Authority] owns
it or RDA [the Redevelopment Authority, which is an oxymoron], it is
ridiculous. So we have been fighting the good fight for this land
value tax, and we almost were successful.
But for those of you who don't live in the city, I am a native
Philadelphian. I refuse to leave. We have an election coming up. We
are going to elect a new mayor, some new City Council people, and I
think with this reassessment that is coming in next year, this is
the time for the land value tax. What my group is doing under the
radar screen is lobbying City Council now. This reassessment is a
nightmare. In Philadelphia they don't assess, they ride by your
house. So you are actually getting penalized if you fixed your
property. If you live in a nice neighborhood you are penalized. It
doesn't make any sense. In our surrounding counties, they actually
go into the house. In Philly if you get a new front to your house,
if you put new windows in, you're dead because you are going to get
penalized. So it is such a disincentive here. They cannot reassess a
property totally 100% based on a sale price. Seniors in this city
are going to be hit the hardest.
The seniors are moving in. They moved out 20 years ago because
they had to raise children. They weren't going to send their
children to the Philadelphia public schools. They couldn't afford
private schools. So they moved to the suburbs. They are paying
property taxes, but their kids go to a nice clean safe school. They
don't have to worry about them for eight hours a day. In
Philadelphia you don't have that. So these seniors are moving back
in. But these seniors have a fixed budget. They are coming back in
the city because their children are grown.
They want the accessibility the city offers. They want the
theater and restaurants, they want the shopping, and they can't
afford $6000 a year in property taxes for a row home in the esteemed
area. We will try to tell City Council members that the land value
tax is fair. Step to step neighbors are paying the same amount of
money. We are looking forward to next year because we are hoping the
land value tax will be our silver bullet once this reassessment
process takes place, and we will be out there raising awareness to
the voters.
Responding to an audience question, Daine Lucidi said it is state
law that assessment happens every year. Now the county was just
reassessed, and it wasn't as bad because their records are not as
bad as those in the city of Philadelphia. In Philadelphia we do the
same areas over and over and over again. People are paying bills
over and over and over again.
Asked a question about the tax abatement, Diane said there was a
point where there wasn't anything being developed in the city.
Businesses were leaving. We needed an incentive for people to come
in and develop this city. The abatement expires in year 2010. For
new construction, the developer goes and applies for all the
building permits and whatever is needed. At that point he will also
apply for an abatement. The new resident coming into that property
has a 10-year abatement. If they chose to leave within 3 years, that
abatement is still valid for the new person coming in. At the end of
the 10 years it is done.
JAMES TAYOUN: If this were called the LVT church, and it was the
only road to salvation, all of you would be saved. The problem is
not too many people outside of this room are not even aware of the
church nor of its benefits nor how to achieve it. The kernel, the
problem itself, is that we have uneducated elected officials. A lot
of them are college graduates, a lot of them are lawyers, but put
together they are all bound by one thing, and that is the need to
get themselves reelected. How do we reach them? I think we have to
change the name of LVT. Really, seriously, someone in this room has
to come up with something that says the tax that gives you
everything in one word or two words. The name LVT confuses people.
The bill itself that can transform Philadelphia simply says millage
on land this figure, millage on property this figure, instead of 4
to 1, which is the present ratio. Just change the millage. Now with
the increase in assessments that was discussed by the previous
speakers, this 100% assessment, the City Council's first reaction
will be, and I am surprised they haven't done it already in
anticipation of this, to reduce the millage. Otherwise, the city
would have a tremendous financial bonanza which nobody among the
electorate will allow. So they are going to reduce the millage to
compensate for this 100% increase so the jolt on people won't be as
big as you have been told it might be, but there still will be a
jolt. This is still the time, as Diane alluded to, for us to go
ahead and try to awaken the public.
If we can convince a couple of the City Council people in this
city, and other cities where you have got the same problem, that
they can become heroes by simply moving this legislation they might
just buy in and do it, if they understood the simplicity of it.
Maybe they will have to go to the Henry George School on 10th Street
and get some lessons like I did about the value of land, then
possibly we would win. This is the time to influence these 17
Council people in the City of Philadelphia. They are not here nor
care to come here. They think if they came here, they would have to
have PhDs from Harvard to be in your company so as to not be
embarrassed. Here we know different. The newspaper I started
publishing about 6 years ago that focuses on city politics, state
politics, the school district, active community groups, etc. has
developed a niche. In that niche I have received tons of mail.
Everything I see points to one thing. We have to educate 17 people.
There are 2-3 vacancies coming up on this City Council next time
around, and I think it is important that the Georgists join with
other groups to support one or two people that have indicated that
they have a propensity to possibly consider becoming LVT proponents
on the Council. Let's just get one or two more people on the City
Council who have an understanding of what LVT is all about, who have
the business sense. The problem with this City Council is nobody is
in business. Not one of them is a business person. I was on the City
Council back to my restaurant days, and my 40-year institution
collapsed because of taxes among other things. I had 16 taxes to pay
for, and when the School Board came in and took 10 percent of our
bar gross, that was the end of it, because that made them 22%
partners in my business. So we have got to get business sense into
this City Council and we have got to go ahead with the next most
improbable thing and that is an awareness in the general population.
Each and every one of you is a vital crusader in the effort to
evangelize the city of Philadelphia and other cities. Thank you.
Responding to the moderator's question, Tayoun said that we lost
the vote to pass a land value tax by one vote, 9-8. The 9th vote
against us, rest his soul, Lucien Blackwell -- a champion of the
people and who made a great name for himself as a benefactor of the
community -- unfortunately when he had the chance to really help us
produce something of good for everybody, including the poorest, he
said, Jimmy, I don't have enough time, I don' t understand it. What
is there to understand? The land is here. The problem is here. Let's
increase the value of the land.
We have been on a crusade in my newspaper banging at the
Philadelphia garage industry. There are parking lots in this city
assessed at 65% of what the other vacant lots in center city are
assessed at, similar vacant lots. One is a parking lot, and for some
reason it is assessed far lower than another vacant lot which hasn't
been developed. The Philadelphia god of parking lots has attacked us
that the land value tax failed in Pittsburgh. We have never
successfully been able to get that story out as to why that happened
in Pittsburgh, but I think that is very necessary. They use that
automatically and that shuts down any argument you have with the
politicians. We know what went wrong in Pittsburgh. We know the
people who created the problem and why they did it. Explaining it is
a very important factor because they use that against us.
Tayoun responded to a question from the audience as to how to get
the City Councilmen to listen while the people explain to them about
the land value tax. It is the tradition of many hearings that once
you have got a quorum everybody can take off except the poor
president and the chairman of the committee. You are supposed to
really look at all the notes and testimony you have missed, read
them, soak them in and come up with a decision. But it is the
leadership that controls the council members at those meetings. For
us to stage these great shows of force at the council hearings was
fine. But it did not impress the people that were missing. I would
get handfuls of people from their community, their districts, and go
to their offices to talk to them. Those of you in Philadelphia who
belong to the organization and are proponents of LVT, I urge to
start lining up the various districts and then go in and say,
listen, we are here to tell you something. You are running next
year. We are not going to be here as your friend any more unless we
get a commitment from you. You are not paying attention to a simple
thing that is very positive, and we want you to do something about
it. We need your support this time, if you want our support. You are
going to have to vote on another situation before you come up for
election in a primary and we want you to make a stand on LVT. Then
we have got to engineer to get the bill in before the primary so
that it is voted on.
KATHY HARRIS, who started with Town Watch in her community,
distributed a set of pictures of the problems in her neighborhood.
She said one of biggest things is you tend to live in your block and
tend to protect what is yours on your lot. We can't live in a
vacuum, we have to live with what goes on outside our block, in our
community. We started to see kids hanging out, drinking beer,
drinking on the highway, shooting crap on the highway. Public
urination was going on. We were told they were looking for areas
with boarded up windows. Then we got a dumping problem. Then we had
abandoned stolen autos they would set on fire after they had gotten
pieces off. Insurance also became problem. People would burn their
own auto. Trash was dumped here, in front of a no dumping sign. What
used to be an active railroad ended up a surface where there were
used cars. Kids would hang out. Problems included graffiti, quality
of life, crime. I looked around and found out all the things that
affect my neighborhood. It is like a roller coaster ride. You can
see beautiful things from above and can go from a nice city block.
Then you go down to the ground and it is a scary ride. You can't
think just about your own front door. You need to see what is
happening in the larger area.
I looked at my real estate taxes. I looked at absentee or
derelict landlord properties and they are paying less. They are own
boarded up homes, with no windows in the home. They are paying less
than we are. What is my incentive in Philadelphia. Then I understood
why people are leaving. I have been here all my life, having moved
from another community and raised my children in Olney. I am even
doubting if I want to invest in Philadelphia as future. Maybe my
kids will move out as did many kids. In my neighborhood, we dodge
bullets, not play dodge ball. I started asking questions. I came to
a meeting and met Josh, Jonathan and Brett and eventually Diane. Why
should I improve property and be penalized. Business owners that are
coming in and not living in the community squeeze as much as they
can, check cashing agencies, this is their investment in our
community. Our taxes are way too high. There is no equalization. I
want to know why land can sit vacant and abandoned so many years. We
need trash cleaned up. If we had homes and businesses on those
properties, it would help pick up the slack. A lot of people don't
understand enough to take the next step. They can't afford to lose a
day from work. Predatory lending has hurt a lot of folks which led
to them losing their homes to bank foreclosures. The role of crimes
affects our real estate. I had to appeal my taxes. I went in with my
pictures. How can you say my taxes are going up, this is what I am
living with. The properties going down are getting low taxes. The
rewards and penalties are going in the wrong direction. I don't like
to see low and middle income people having unfair taxes. Folks that
moved to my community from worse communities than mine are now
struggling to hold onto their home. We have people driving through
neighborhoods looking to see if they can break up single family
residential units into rentals, creating transients. We are looking
for fairness in what we have just in our community and asking for
fairness back.
Asked if she won when she appealed her assessment two years ago,
Kathy Harris said yes. She went with about 70 pictures throughout
her community. They were only doing three blocks area when they did
the reassessment. She took pictures around her area, took Police
crime data with her, copies of auto theft, buyers, arson. The
Greater Olney Community Council publicizes meetings with flyers and
in the local newspaper. If Josh Vincent or Jonathan Saidel or
someone from the Police Dept. comes to speak, they pack a room.
BRETT MANDEL: This is a room of people that understand the power
of a good idea enduring and that it will eventually prevail.
Politicians come and go. Philadelphia is in desperate need of a good
idea. In Philadelphia we have lost one-fourth of our residential and
one-fourth of our business over the past half century. People moved
out because people want one-quarter acre lots in suburbs but also
because of a tax system that is punishing. Over the past 50 years
Philadelphia lost 1/2 million residents and 1/4 million jobs. We
continue to lose while Philadelphia revenue is gaining, Philadelphia
is losing children. When I was with the City Controller's Office, we
wrote a Tax Analysis Report. We created a tax reform commission and
then put it on the ballot for people to vote. People voted 80% yes
to create the commission. My ex-boss Jonathan Saidel appointed me to
the commission. What is the reason behind Philadelphia's tax
problems? In 1939 Philadelphia politicians imposed a wage tax
because they said they didn't want to tax little old ladies' houses.
Philadelphia creates jobs and revenue. It was to be a temporary tax.
Sixty some years later it became the tax that ate Philadelphia: $1
billion tax on wages, more than 4% for residents and almost 4% for
non-residents. It is a tax for the privilege of doing business.
Fifty years later we have seen how these businesses moved. Most
locations tax on the value of place. We have a lot of wage tax and
BPT (business privilege tax). On the street side in Philadelphia
there is less stuff than on the street side outside of Philadelphia.
In Philadelphia the decision was made not to tax property. The
decision to fix that is going to put more pressure on the real
estate base. If we reduce the burden of doing business in
Philadelphia, there would have to be lot of pressure on the tax
base. If I gave you dollars to go out to buy a house, you would find
we do not have horizontal equity in housing assessments. If you look
at a house in this neighborhood, it might be taxed 70% higher than a
house in another neighborhood which might be 40% of what it could
sell for. In Philadelphia, assessments errors are widespread. As an
average, city property is at about 70% of what the house could sell
for, a systematically regressive way where people that live in area
may be at 25% or 150% of what they could get for house. It creates
unpredictability in the housing market. You want to know what the
tax bill will be next year or the year after that. We have to assess
fairly.
We looked at LVT (land value taxation). In Philadelphia, a city
of tens of thousands of vacant properties, it makes great sense to
implement any policy to reduce the tax burden and create a fair
system to discourage speculation. Philadelphia has lost none of our
land but is taxing more and getting less of what we want, so go put
pressure on people to sell or use productively. LVT became part of
the commission proposal. The claim is that about 80% of people in
Philadelphia would save. For people asked to pay more, for most it
is not significantly. Those paying more were those reassessed in
recent years, and are better off. Under LVT you customarily are
going to save. Some of the contributors to councilmen are going to
call them, refinery owners and land speculators. Since the day the
reform commission released their report lots of groups see it makes
good sense.
We recognized policy doesn't move forward without support, and
that is why I left the Controller's office. In politics and
government things won't happen because it is a good idea. Things
happen because good policy meets good politics. We created a web
site and speakers bureau. Last year we spent a lot of time screaming
to eliminate the job killing business tax. It passed the Council
twice and the mayor vetoed it twice. Questions about the real estate
tax were put off until reassessment. Only when the reassessment is
done will it be OK to talk about LVT. Philadelphia's real estate tax
is unfair vertically and horizontally; there are problems house to
house and neighbor to neighbor. In the entire city, some are
underassessed and some are overassessed. The effort to reassess the
city will have to be fair across the city; do it revenue neutral.
The politicians may reject the assessment. Or maybe they will have a
freeze -- take unfairness now and leave it. Philadelphia Forward is
creating resources where we are taking the population in every
Council district where housing is overassessed and underassessed, so
we are seeing what is going to happen to folks. If it is done in a
revenue neutral way, there are other policies out there to help
them. It can be buffered in to go up less so as not to spike. You
could have LVT and help out your constituency. You can combine
policies. We want to create resources for politicians and also have
politicians hear the message. In 2007 every councilman is up for
reelection. A new mayor will be chosen. The Tax Commission
recommended to do the reassessment.
A person in the audience asked a question about the effects of
gentrification. Brett answered that people living in a nicer
neighborhood, where crime has gone down, the streets are cleaner and
the schools are better, are asked to pay more. There are policies,
whether it is a reverse mortgage or whether it is some kind of
homestead exemption or whether we do some kind of set aside in
neighborhoods or linkages that if you are going to develop property
in this neighborhood you are going to have some of property that is
low income or affordable housing. All those things there are policy
answers for. The reverse is what do I do when no one wants to move
into my neighborhood, when no one wants to pay anything to be here;
I can't sell my house even if I wanted to because no one would buy
it; we don't have an answer to those problems. A lot is happening
around center city that is exciting to some and troubling to others
with lots of people moving in and being willing to pay a lot more
than anybody had ever wanted to pay to be in these neighborhoods. Do
I accept $300,000 for a home that I couldn't have sold for $50,000
two years ago, or do I continue to stay in a neighborhood where I
will have to pay taxes as if my home really was worth $300,000?
People can borrow against the value of their house. For good or for
bad, what the city does locally is create a place where people want
to be and build schools and build parks and build roads for people
who want to be here. And when people decide, yes, I want to be here
and a lot of people want to be in your neighborhood, so many so that
they are bidding up the price of houses, then it is a good problem,
and a problem that we can solve with other policies. It is a problem
that we shouldn't try to solve by artificially holding down the
increases in value of properties by underassessing properties and it
certainly is not a problem where we can say we have got to stop
people from coming into this neighborhood because we want to
maintain this neighborhood in this decaying state. One policy
solution is called the reverse mortgage. People are able to take the
value of their house today and generate taxes today that is paid
back on the house as first debt. There are policies like Homestead
Exemption where you recognize that a certain amount of the value of
your house is not really an asset, it is your home, to hold
everybody harmless for, whatever, the first $20,000 or $50,000.
There are other policies that would have to enacted at the state
level that the Tax Commission recommended. One is called circuit
breaker legislation where you would hold down the increase in the
property tax that an individual would be paying if their income is
not increasing as well. That solution would have to happen at the
state level. The nice thing is that there are policies that can
address these problems, they are problems that we can solve. But by
maintaining a system that allows neighborhoods to decay, we don't
have a solution to that.