"Mostly there are just pearl clutchers complaining about how elderly cash poor people sitting in large old houses on expensive land they've lived in for 20 years would be financially nudged into downgrading"
I wonder if you wouldn't be clutching your pearls if you were being forced (sorry, "financially nudged") out of your home of 20 years?
These cash poor elderly folks aren't exactly "oligarchic".
“Beat it, grandma! We have better ideas on how to use the land and house you raised a family in!” is unlikely to be a winning campaign platform. (Thankfully.)
You may be happy running an economy on vibes, but it makes no sense for old people who have a house intended for them and kids close to their work to remain there when their kids have moved out and they've retired. The fact that you can't afford to live somewhere isn't some crime. They can go move somewhere nicer and more suitable for them, freeing up that land for densification (or just proper occupancy).
Why do you think it's up to you to decide what's more suitable for someone else? Where do you get that right?
The problem you're running into is that it doesn't matter if it makes sense to you what these people want to do with their private property. What you think is "proper occupancy" doesn't matter, because we have private property rights.
You advocating for policies that infringe on that right is an attempt to exercise power over these people that you have no right to, whether or not you hide behind some collective sense of what's best.
Currently renting retirees are forced out already if they dont pay their rent.
Can you confirm that you wish to see this practice completely banned (i.e. no payment of rent) to prove that you're not taking a two faced stance on this issue?
What we are talking about is different - a tax incentive to move to somebody who has benefitted from a large capital gain.
I’m fine with (and in support of) market forces to let grandma decide that it’s worth selling her home; I’m not okay with using government mechanisms with no market reference points to price her out of it. (Raise everyone’s property tax rate and reference appraisals to market sales? Fine. Determine that her specific piece of land is worth $X despite no comparison of open-market land-only transactions? Not fine.)
From that, it’s fair to conclude that I’m ok with renters having to pay market rent, regardless of their age or matriarchal status.
>I’m fine with (and in support of) market forces to let grandma decide that it’s worth selling her home
Ok. Sounds like you are in favor of market forces driving grandma on to the street when she rents but not in favor of market forces driving grandma to sell up and move to a smaller cheaper property.
Maybe the pearl clutching about poor grandmas was a little overstated.
>Determine that her specific piece of land is worth $X despite no comparison of open-market land-only transactions? Not fine.)
LVT is calculated and imputed using open market transactions. If unimproved property values all jump in an area thats coz the land value went up.
Show me a way that LVT can applied referencing open market transactions for unimproved land in a developed area and I’m interested to learn more about it.
Grandma can decide to sell her house on the market if the property taxes get too high. That’s good. She shouldn’t be able to be targeted by the city for her land value alone increasing despite no or weak supporting comps.
LVT is theoretically good. My problems with it are practical ones.
What a lot of jurisdiction do to deal with this situation is to allow elderly folks to accrue what is essentially a lien on their house for the property taxes going up more than a certain amount.
This way these folks don't have to pay much more than before, can stay in their house and the county gets its share when these people die or move out.
I wonder if you wouldn't be clutching your pearls if you were being forced (sorry, "financially nudged") out of your home of 20 years?
These cash poor elderly folks aren't exactly "oligarchic".