[quote=Jermain] Poor people don't deserve to live close to downtown?
QUOTE]

"Deserve", as Dr. G pointed out is really an unappropriate term, at least used this way, if we must though...

Real estate near the center of a Great City DESERVES to be expensive. Economics is not mathematics, but there might be formulas for this stuff...

And its not poor people that is problematic, per se...diversity is really to be valued above all...therefore in the city center you have apartments, so there isn't just the super rich or the gentry, and so people who value living there can have a more afforable option then buying (but when we wanted to buy a house, we were pushed out of old old neighborhood, we were too poor)...and it also follows that diversity would be enhanced with subsidized housing in city centers...and this should be the case, and it should be opened up to immigrants too!!! See how much the area around 13th and spruce/locust benefits??? (i kid...that wasn't fair...)

yeah...the more i think about this the madder i get...we lived in rittenhouse square for years. but the super rich developers priced us out so we couldn't buy a home. i mean we couldn't even own a home in OUR neighborhood. instead, i guess we were deemed too poor, and we were pushed out...gentrification indeed!!!

Good points. Can I just add that the good neighbors pay their property taxes and have no reason to fear increases in property taxes.

Philly allows seniors to freeze their property taxes. My senior neighbors pay a third of what I do. I'm content with this.

The people being "forced out" by property taxes are literally the people who almost never paid them. There are people who paid something like $50-100 per property, and when renovation comes through, they get bumped up to $300-400 for the first several years. Then people apply for the freeze.

You need to have about $1500 in debt for the private collection agency to go after you. But it likes to see much more. So they look for about $5K in debt.

That means these are accounts that have not been paid not only after the first renovation, but all those years before it when taxes were cheap. Check it out on www.hallwatch.org and see the patterns of debt for yourself.

What people complain about is that they can't inherit grandma's house and pay the rate of tax grandma paid. So they are "driven out" by "high taxes" and "gentrification." Except that why should any new owner, even a relative, get to pay way less than a sustainable rate, even as their income is similar to mine, and the value of their house comparable?

So people try not to fix their houses, try not to sweep and clean up, try not to paint, it becomes a ridiculous anti-tax campaign that is misguided.

People avoid probate, avoid changing the deed record, and then squabble as a family as to how to pay the taxes. So they don't. The mayor wants to "preserve AA homeownership (and voters)" so he lets this go on. There is no real fining of houses that need to fined. There is no collection of overdue taxes on accounts where the owner of record is dead.

But it costs $8K to educate one child in bad schools. It will cost more next year, esp. as the schools (just schools now) get better.

If Philly continually undervalues property so grossly that it cheats schoolchildren but makes voters and long term residents happy, is this a liberal value? It contradicts everything liberals stand for. Fairness, justice, good social programs.

I bash the libs and Dems here a bit, but only because they so could not care how bad the schools are. It's shocking to me. They would rather not collect taxes and would rather bash those who pay them. They would rather call all renovation an evil.

I suspect that if the good Democrats, who are a majority, who earnestly want better schools understand that we have to pay for them. We can't afford to allow any resident to pay taxes at the level of what they were years ago.

They have to pay today's rate today, just like I do. Sure it hurts. But it goes to a very good cause -- our town.

If I was a min. wage earner, I know I would not be here when three states just next door pay dollars more above that as their state-mandated min. wage.

In other words, it's not a crime to move to where the opportunities are.

:what:

Weren't you claiming that the tax re-assessment is a tax increase on people who pay their taxes in another thread?

Chicago is gorgeous, full of public art and new construction, with a vibrant, even pricey downtown. Same for San Fran. Stuttgart, if you see a piece of trash take a photo. It is that rare.

NYC is more and more fabulous every day. Art, culture, a tax base.

All of these places have large liberal governments in charge.

Compared to Philly, we are dirty, trashy, with lots of vacant lots in the area outside of downtown CC but still walkable to the core.

That suggests obstacles that have a solution that we haven't tried yet.

No. How could that be?

Taxes are re-assessed without the BRT examining payment of prior taxes. The reassessments are due to comparable sales value. Not rate of payment.

Comps drive reassessments. When an area has higher value in sale prices, not revenue for the city, it gets re-looked at by the BRT.

So you can have people who never pay taxes right next to houses that are brand new and gorgeous in Philly that pay some of the highest taxes ever recorded in that zip per sf. That is the tragedy that bad schools could get all the revenue they need, if only the city would collect overdue taxes left unpaid even when taxes were REALLY LOW.

There is no public tax collection mechanism that operates at a level even close to the real debt. There hasn't been for a long time.

Is it time to change that? How?

You tell me. You clearly stated several times that you believe the city is raising property taxes in lieu of collecting back taxes. When I asked what tax increase you were referring to, you said the re-assessment. I and a couple others pointed out that it is not a tax increase and you argued with us. Now in this thread you claim that no one needs to fear any tax increases.

That suggests a difference of perspective. Chicago is a pit. The baggage handlers at O'Hare display their gang colors. New York has tons of vacant lots outside of manhattan. Philly is also full of pulic art and new construction and vastly more walkable than either of those cities.

If you disagree, I suggest with as much as you apparently hate about everything in your neighborhood and this city, that you may wish to relocate to one of them. Why not?