To the editor: I would have liked to see Mitchell Landsberg and Gale Holland write more about Proposition 13 as a factor in our city’s housing crisis (“The real story of how L.A. became the epicenter of America’s homeless crisis,” July 10). It receives but a paragraph’s attention, and is faulted only for starving local governments of funds to deal with homelessness. In fact, the gravest consequence of Proposition 13 has been to subsidize property owners, allowing them to so dearly cling to their holdings as to distort the market in their favor. By holding assessed value for tax purposes close to the price at the time of purchase, Proposition 13 disincentivizes longtime owners to sell, thereby perpetually constraining inventory on the public’s dime.
The housing crisis is fundamentally driven by sky-high real estate prices, and there is no solution whatsoever that does not involve denting owners’ precious property values. Repealing Proposition 13 in favor of a heavy tax on the present value of land, preferably with improvements exempted, is the single most efficient means to such an end. If we are not willing to tank California’s real estate market, then we are not willing to solve the problem.
Michael Raley, Los Angeles
