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Old 07-05-2011, 10:35 AM
 
Location: West Orange, NJ
12,546 posts, read 21,353,711 times
Reputation: 3730

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801 View Post
Yes. In the example I gave of my mother's friends, there are no condos in their town. When you are 80 years old, the last thing you need is to have to move to a place where you don't know a soul, far from your familiar surroundings and your friends. It's not a matter of the seniors "needing" the house. It is their damn house.

The young family is not paying any extra taxes to to take care of the older people. It's a matter of the older people being able to stay in their homes and not paying tax for the young family's kids to go to school and play football and soccer.
i never actually looked at it this way, but very true. so really, in NJ, it is somewhat more directly the "users" paying for the public schools, since the senior citizens are essentially taken out of the equation by the rebate from the state. interesting.
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Old 07-05-2011, 10:38 AM
 
Location: West Orange, NJ
12,546 posts, read 21,353,711 times
Reputation: 3730
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801 View Post
Really, it's kind of creepy that people would even entertain the idea that the old folks should just be stashed away somewhere to make way for the younger ones.
i understand the general point being made though. if taxes go up, up, up in the next 10 years, and all of a sudden a family with 2 40 year olds could no longer afford the taxes...should their property taxes be frozen also, so they can continue to live in the town they have established themselves in?

i agree that we shouldn't push senior citizens out. but i'm not sure people reading some responses if people are disagreeing with what the OP is saying, or just missing his point.
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Old 07-05-2011, 10:41 AM
 
Location: West Orange, NJ
12,546 posts, read 21,353,711 times
Reputation: 3730
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl View Post
Did it occur to anyone that they do this to SAVE money for the rest of us? Many towns would be worse off if all the seniors moved out and younger families moved in. Many towns approve new senior housing and not general developments because more their schools are already overcrowded and they can't afford to build more. Why is there so much US against THEM (who are really US a few decades from now)? I think the politicians finally got it figured out, get us to turn on each other and eat our own so we don't look too closely at the politicians themselves or their corporate sponsors. Teachers are the enemy, no it's cops, no it's those darned seniors!
very well put...though seniors will never be the enemy fed to us by politicians...they vote in too great numbers hehe
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Old 07-05-2011, 10:47 AM
 
Location: West Orange, NJ
12,546 posts, read 21,353,711 times
Reputation: 3730
Quote:
Originally Posted by Annie53 View Post
OK.....then let's take away ALL tax breaks.

Why should you get tax deductions for having a child?

If YOU want a child.....pay for it yourself. The human race isn't in danger of becoming extinct.

Why should you get tax deductions for buying a home and having a mortgage?

If YOU can't afford to buy a home without tax deductions, perhaps you shouldn't have that home.

See how that works?
no! only get rid of the tax breaks that I don't get. all the ones I get are well thought out by policy makers, and make the world a better place. isn't that obvious?
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Old 07-05-2011, 10:50 AM
 
Location: West Orange, NJ
12,546 posts, read 21,353,711 times
Reputation: 3730
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sawdustmaker View Post
Stops young families? From what?

Saving money to buy a house?

Find another town to buy in.

How are the taxes higher for everyone else? That was already addressed. Pay attention.


How many times have you come back as a different poster? 3 or 4, by now?
#1 - i am OK with the tax break given to seniors, to allow them to stay in the towns they spent their lives in...

#2 - had to say #1 first so you realize, i'm not disagreeing with you by saying this but....taxes are higher for everyone else because seniors get that "refund" from someone...yes, it's from the state. so everyone in the state who doesn't get the refund is paying more in state taxes. it's not like the state magically comes up with money, to give seniors a rebate on their local property taxes. Yes...the town gets the same amount of money either way...but to miss the fact that we're all paying a little bit to the state to help pay for the senior property tax rebate is ignoring simple mathmatics.

that being said...it's a question on whether or not one believes this is a good policy or a bad policy.
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Old 07-05-2011, 10:54 AM
 
Location: West Orange, NJ
12,546 posts, read 21,353,711 times
Reputation: 3730
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl View Post
You think it's only seniors who don't take care of their homes? You are angry at your neighbor, you hate your neighbor, and apparently, given your post here and your other thread about them, spend an inordinate amount of time seething in bitterness and resentment about them and scheming about how you can best punish them...that's fine if you want to feel that way, but it's a little ridiculous to infer all seniors allow their homes to fall into disrepair because of it.
my neighbor is in his late 70s. in the past 2 months, he did spring cleaning (garage, etc), redid his front steps with nice new masonry, re-seeded his backyard, and planted a garden.

those damn seniors, not caring how their properties look!
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Old 07-05-2011, 07:36 PM
 
Location: Elsewhere
88,224 posts, read 84,127,726 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bradykp View Post
i understand the general point being made though. if taxes go up, up, up in the next 10 years, and all of a sudden a family with 2 40 year olds could no longer afford the taxes...should their property taxes be frozen also, so they can continue to live in the town they have established themselves in?

i agree that we shouldn't push senior citizens out. but i'm not sure people reading some responses if people are disagreeing with what the OP is saying, or just missing his point.
Good point, but I don't think it's the same thing. Two 40-year-olds have a few decades ahead of them to move somewhere else and recover, besides the ability to make an adjustment to a new place emotionally. The women I was thinking of specifically--my mother's friends--are octogenarians living on fixed incomes who have lived in their small town since their birth and have been in their houses since they got married 60 years ago or so. They are healthy enough to be on their own and their daily lives and routines are there--their churches, their friends, their social lives. And all of them keep their homes and yards nice, usually with the help of their sons and/or other relatives.

I grew up in that same town, fifth generation, left but returned to raise my daughter there, and I couldn't afford to stay there once she graduated high school so I moved 60 miles south. I am 52 years old, and I can adjust, but I don't think those elderly folks should be forced out. It would kill them, literally, and I don't think we'd be worth much as a society if that's what we did.
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Old 07-05-2011, 09:05 PM
pvs
 
1,845 posts, read 3,358,608 times
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+1, mq
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Old 07-06-2011, 07:32 AM
 
Location: West Orange, NJ
12,546 posts, read 21,353,711 times
Reputation: 3730
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801 View Post
Good point, but I don't think it's the same thing. Two 40-year-olds have a few decades ahead of them to move somewhere else and recover, besides the ability to make an adjustment to a new place emotionally. The women I was thinking of specifically--my mother's friends--are octogenarians living on fixed incomes who have lived in their small town since their birth and have been in their houses since they got married 60 years ago or so. They are healthy enough to be on their own and their daily lives and routines are there--their churches, their friends, their social lives. And all of them keep their homes and yards nice, usually with the help of their sons and/or other relatives.

I grew up in that same town, fifth generation, left but returned to raise my daughter there, and I couldn't afford to stay there once she graduated high school so I moved 60 miles south. I am 52 years old, and I can adjust, but I don't think those elderly folks should be forced out. It would kill them, literally, and I don't think we'd be worth much as a society if that's what we did.
i agree, generally speaking. i just think many people missed the point. maybe it was poorly made. but at what age do we say - "you can no longer establish roots in a new place"? my wife's grandparents moved to florida in their 60s. plenty of people do it in their 60s and 70s, so who's to say what age can't?

i think it's a nice thing to do for people who have lived in a town their entire lives. that's more common in age groups older than me. but ask almost anyone age 20-40 if they think they'll live in the same town in 20 years, and i bet you'd easily get a simple majority that say definitely not. we've become more mobile, for better or for worse, in our living spaces, in our careers, etc etc.

but then a lot of people say it's not costing us anything in the town, because the town still gets the taxes. well, it is costing us, it's just spread across the state.

again - i agree with the policy, and i don't see the need to kick old people out of their homes just so new people can live there.
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Old 07-06-2011, 10:52 AM
 
2,160 posts, read 4,948,628 times
Reputation: 5527
Some of the posts in this thread are ridiculous. "Young families" are entitled to 4-bedroom houses? Seniors "should" downsize and live in condos? Are you seriously effing kidding me?

The senior tax freeze is 100% absolutely justified. And by the way, this tax freeze is subject to strictly defined income limits...it's not available to all seniors, all across the board.

By the time a homeowner is 65 years old, he has paid an average of $200,000 in property taxes (assuming 40 years of home ownership and paying property taxes). They built the towns, they maintained the towns, they paid their dues. Let's give them a break, m'kay?

And it's not like they stop paying taxes...it's just that they "only" have to pay whatever their property taxes were the year they turned 65 (and again, seniors are subject to income limits). The average life expectancy isn't much more than 85 years old...assuming the oldest seniors are ~85 right now, they are (1) paying 1991 property taxes which aren't the peanuts that people are making them out to be; and (2) don't worry about getting your self-entitled "young family" into these seniors' homes because at 85, they're about to buy the farm, kick the bucket, get 6 feet under and be pushing up daisies anyway. People that live beyond 85 are the exception. It's a lot more common for seniors to bite the dust earlier, so the number of tax break years they get to "enjoy" aren't as many as people are sensationalizing inside of their hysterical minds.

But regardless of all this, the concept of giving seniors a tax break makes sense. A senior citizen can not earn a decent wage (if they are capable at all of working a full time job). When people reach a certain age, they are encouraged...nudged...to retire. Or, they are just blatantly let go. We don't even want senior citizens performing simple tasks like driving cars, for crissake. So, as a society, we don't really want them working, but yet we expect them to pay the same amount of taxes? Yeah, that's fair.

On top of all this, there is the extra cost of being old. Prescription medication. Medical devices. Special diets. Medical procedures.

EVERYBODY gets old. EVERYBODY. A civilized society takes care of its senior citizens.

Last edited by Docendo discimus; 07-06-2011 at 11:02 AM..
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