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I was district manager over Shadowood Theatre in Boca along with the other south Florida WOMETCO theatres for a few years. It was highly entertaining, especially since the manager there took no guff from anyone and could chew and spit them out in seconds, while doing three other tasks at the same time with a smile. He had some good war stories. Come to think of it, I do remember an assistant manager there who was a casualty of those wars, to the point of getting written up in the newspapers for barricading himself in the office rather than face a mob of the angry entitled. I think he quit and went off to war in Afghanistan because it was less dangerous.
Many years ago, I had to turn away Steven Spielberg for a sold out showing at the Sundance Film Festival. He was very gracious about it; he was hoping to score a seat at the 11th hour.
Separately, I had to turn away Oliver Stone for a sold out showing. He threw a temper tantrum demanding a spot, then saying he could stand in the projectionist booth. He was a total douche nozzle.
I doubt that property taxes on second homes is a significant factor in the rise of homelessness among baby boomers.
Though I certainly could see where property taxes on a primary residences could lead to person to selling their home and eventually ending up homeless.
A friend is looking at homes for sale in the western suburbs of Chicago. Modest 3/2 homes have property taxes around $10K/year. That's almost $1,000/month just in property taxes. Add insurance, utilities, and repairs and it would be unaffordable for someone with $2K/month SS check. And that's where a lot of folks sit.
Renting, of course, would be a challenge as costs would be about the same.
Two retirees pooling their resources might be able to swing it.
May be. The tax is providing an additional disincentive to rent them…
Just to be clear, I am not the promoter of this (SF tax of unoccupied property) scheme but find complaints about it way over the top. We have the system we have, taxes we have. We need not like them (I definitely do not) but this diarrhea of complaints seemed over the top to me.
At least 20 posts on one thread about it was a bit much.
I left CA not just for lower COL and state income taxes, but because so many new rules and nanny laws, and weird new ways to tax people for things they already paid for and weren't even using, etc. When our county wanted me to pay a fee to help pay for a new sewer treatment system upgrade, when I was on my own septic system (which I paid for with no help from the sewer system), and when they wanted to tax those with our own wells to maintain a water system we aren't even connected to, and then wanted to tax us a "wildfire protection fee" when I already pay county taxes for fire protection, and state taxes for Cal Fire, I said enough is enough and we moved out of state. If you can't vote them out, take your ball and find a new game.
Back on topic... I once came very close to homelessness, but it was long, long ago. I was a young kid, not even 19 yet. I was living with a boyfriend, working and paying my own way, when he dumped me in a city 500 miles from home. I found a roommate for a couple months, but she moved out without warning, leaving me high and dry and unable to pay the rent on my own and eat, so something had to give. My rent without the roommate was $400, and I made $450/month working full-time. I basically was starving. I was living on a half block of chicken Top Ramen and 8 oz of milk per day. Milk for breakfast, a cup of bouillon and ramen noodles for dinner. About once a week I got one of those 39 cent McDonald's hamburgers with ketchup. That was all I could afford and still pay the rent. I went from 122 pounds to 95 pounds in less than one month, before I was rescued by family. I spent all day on a city bus to visit my dad who lived about 50 miles away. He said nothing about my weight and didn't even ask me to stay to dinner. About what I expected after a life of total disinterest from 500 miles away. Apparently, he called my mom, and she begged my sister to take me in. My mom was pretty much homeless herself and living in a 22 ft travel trailer stored on my brother's property. They had to send me money for a $49 plane ticket to my sister's place. Sis and her hubby took me in, and I was able to transfer my job up north to where my sister lived, so I started paying a bit of rent to them and within a few months I'd saved enough to move in with a roommate I worked with. I never had another time where I came so close to being on the street. I won't forget the feeling of knowing that after I'd paid my rent that last month, before my family saved me, I was close to penniless, and without hope. I was a person who could never ask for help because I'd never needed it that bad. I'd always fended for myself and what I felt was not that I was too proud to ask, but actually afraid that if I asked, they'd say no. I felt so alone and was going through a major depression at the time after losing my love of 2 years, and starving certainly didn't help.
There are so many ways to become homeless and I read a recent study stating that many cases of homelessness could've been avoided with less than $500 assistance and referrals. However, once you are on the street it takes a lot more to get you back inside: first and last month's rent, security deposit, utility deposits, rental references, etc. The cheapest intervention is to prevent the eviction before it happens with that little injection of funds where needed, and the proper referrals and application assistance.
Last edited by TheShadow; 11-29-2023 at 09:11 AM..
The Shadow -
Similar here. MIL used a HS PoA and a personal friend banker to close our accounts after I refused take cash and disappear when it was evident that I was sticking around. $25, an old pick up and one job lined up 18 hours down the road. It did not kill us but it made for a couple of interesting bumps in the road.
Hello, folks! There is a new thread re second homes; some people don't want them discussed here any more. But I will just say that your argument is similar to criminalizing abortion because a woman has an option of giving the child for adoption. An owner who can't/doesn't want to pay punitive property taxes, when they are very disproportionate to the property value, doesn't in fact have "an option" to sell the property, but is forced to sell the property. Again, please let's go to the other thread to discuss this stuff (not my idea or preference, but there are other posters who want to prohibit posting about second homes in this thread).
But you don't need to sell your condo, to avoid the tax you just need to live in it for more than 182 days, so stay in your condo for one more day than you currently do and you don't have to worry about this tax.
Well, the property is in a town. The town needs roads paved, traffic light repairs, garage pickup, police & fire departments and schools. It also pays the retirement pensions for its workers.
How would you pay for the above without a property tax?
Meantime, the biggest drivers of homelessness is what our PhinneyWalker is experiencing now. Her decades long rental was turned into a Airbnb. It's airbnb & other short term rentals at higher profits is taking apartments off the market.. It's also fueling dramatic increase in rents.
Rentals are out there and so are relatively inexpensive ones. They may not be exactly where one wants to be for whatever reasons.
As renter you have to realize that you do not own the property no matter how long you lived there.
By random chance, I just came across a factoid regarding supply of housing.
In San Francisco, from the time you apply for a building permit to build a house until the city issues you the permit, on average, 627 days will have elapsed.
627 days average wait time to just get a building permit. <== Let that sink in.
To build a house.
But you're not in the clear, as all manner of NIMBYs will do their best to block you from building that house: historical preservation societies, environmental agencies, planning commission, groups of existing residents.
All that adds to the manufacturing cost.
All that drives rent higher and higher.
All that contributes to seniors losing a roof over their head.
If local governments wished to do so, with the stroke of a pen, they could reduce the costs of adding housing supply dramatically. That they do not do so indicates that governments and the citizens to whom the listen do not wish to reduce the costs of building new homes.
For example, Utah-based developer Dell Loy Hansen has been working with a non-profit to build new housing in Kiev, Ukraine. They recently announced they had completed 82 houses in four and a half months. With bombs falling on them and a difficult labor market because anybody able bodied is in the war.
Eighty-two houses in 22 weeks. <== Let that sink in.
But you don't need to sell your condo, to avoid the tax you just need to live in it for more than 182 days, so stay in your condo for one more day than you currently do and you don't have to worry about this tax.
I replied to you in a different thread.
You folks demanded that I stop posting about this matter in this thread, so would you kindly also stop commenting on my posts in this thread? I opened another one for that purpose.
You just don't get it, do you? I'm angry, not at you, but at the lack of understanding of consequences on this and so many things that seems pervasive these days.
I will spell this one out.
I grew up in a small Vermont town that was undiscovered in the 1950s and even through the 1970s. It had, and has, a certain charm. Wages there were not anywhere near as high as what people got if they moved to Albany, New York, or Detroit, but they were more or less in balance with the cost of living in that economy and it kept us there. - Hold that thought, it is important.
Vermont, as a state, was dealt a stacked deck by geography. It has no seaport, unlike all other New England state and New York. The relatively small area of decent farmland is too limited for the economies of scale enjoyed by Kansas and the breadbasket of the country. Logging the hills of the easier forests had been done by around 1900. Mineral wealth is only marble, granite, and asbestos. Demand for all three fell in the 20th century. Industry as a whole was and is minimal, due to logistics and costs associated with long hard winters and poor roads.
The state legislature had a dilemma with the coming of the Model T automobile - lack of industry and income, and a shrinking agricultural base, limited the money needed to keep increasingly important roads open in winter and mud season. Taxing the residents could only go so far to supporting the budget.
Around 1930 a decision was made to promote tourism, and the outside money that would bring. In effect, Vermonters prostituted the bucolic beauty they lived in for much of the year. It seemed a logical and innocuous move, and it worked for many years. Leaf peepers, skiers, and those on summer vacations all brought money into the economy that was eventually taxed in some form. The roads got cleared of snow in winter, there was pride in the idea of being a rugged Vermonter.
Fast forward to today. Schools cost much more to run (a hot button issue that is outside of this discussion), infrastructure is aging and needing costly repairs. Environmental regulations keep industries out - partly so that tourism remains supported. That means - Asbestos and talc mines? Uh, just no. Logging? Only under strict regulation. Bagging coffee? Only until the business is bought out and effectively moved to a more industry friendly state. It sometimes seems to Vermonters that the biggest industry outside of tourism and government is bondo and repair of cars so they pass inspection after living in salt and slush for four months of the year.
So, Daddy Warbucks wants to buy a third house in the state, fully expecting to be welcomed with open arms, fully expecting to buy lunch at the same price the locals are charged, and reap the benefits of living in an impoverished economy where workers scramble to make their money servicing the rich seasonally in businesses that are not locally owned, but the likes of giant ski conglomerates that also own slopes in Colorado and elsewhere.
If you want services, they have to be paid for. If you want a gorgeous landscape un-marred by five story cheap-azz condos and apartments stuck in the middle of your perfect picture, there has to be regulation and a limiting of developers. If you don't want to be snow-bound on your ski vacation, then you need to be prepared to contribute to road upkeep all year around. Nature doesn't degrade roads only when you are in residence.
More to the point, if you don't want your new third home next to a ghost community filled only with those who cannot work and can't leave, you need to be part of what makes that community survive. Wages have to keep up with costs or people move. Taxes have to be enough to educate their kids or they leave. You have to support those who actually DO actively support the community. Don't like that bag of Vermont apples? The road goes both ways.
Vermont tries to encourage a limited cadre of small businesses. You might find expensive clay pots or quirky artwork, buy those, and think you have done your job to support the community. If only it were that easy. That purchase doesn't support the dishwasher at the restaurant, the janitor at the school, the plow driver, or a host of other people that are needed to make a functioning community. Whether you are in residence or not, those costs continue, and the price you paid to live there just took land off the market that might have been bought less expensively by the teacher's son, so that he too could live there.
You pay more taxes for your luxury while people in the community are struggling to live and scratch out a living there? Pardon my crocodile tears.
Again, my vitriol is not aimed at you. It is aimed at the pervasive lack of understanding of consequences that is endemic. If you don't want outright socialism or communism, then be prepared to pony up the costs of keeping the systems running in areas that you like and frequent.
It sounds like the elected leaders of Vermont, for many generations, have made policy decisions that have led to poor economic development to the detriment of Vermont citizens.
It is enlightening to compare Vermont's economic policy decisions & outcome with, say, that of Las Vegas NV. Before WWII, Las Vegas was little more than a whistle stop on the train tracks in the desert with few natural resources other than sand and no seaport just like you describe Vermont; then came a series of economic policy decisions. Now Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world with more celebrity chefs per capita than any place else on the planet, a recently completed NFL stadium with relocation of the Raiders, the forthcoming MLB stadium with the relocation of the A's, the recent running of a Formula 1 race, etc.
It sounds like the Vermont elected representatives ought to look in the mirror and dispassionately assess just what they did wrong and what they can change to make things better for Vermont.
And it sounds like the first place those Vermont elected representatives and all Vermont citizens can start is by thanking their tourist customers and 2nd home owners.
I remember Michael Bloomberg giving a talk many decades ago, and one of his anecdotes was regarding the Christmas-time tradition of thanking customers. He had implemented a policy that each and every Bloomberg employee would personally contact & thank customers. He set it up so that each employee received a list of customers (maybe dozen or so) -- people they most likely had never met nor talked to - and personally call them up and thank them for their business. Of course, VIPs would be handled by Bloomberg executives - at least that was what was supposed to happen.
After the Holidays, Michael received a call from Sandy Weill, the then-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Citigroup, one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. Sandy wanted to relay to Bloomberg an odd conversation.
A telephone call from a Bloomberg employee was put through to Sandy. Now, Sandy Weill is a very busy person, and normally telephone calls to him are screened by a couple layers of gatekeepers to handle the usual types of calls. But this was a telephone call from a Bloomberg employee, and when Bloomberg calls the Chairman of Citigroup -- well, that call was put through.
This is where the story gets interesting.
"Mr. Weill, you don't know me, but my name is José Hernández, and I work for Bloomberg," Sandy told Michael. "I'm calling on behalf of Bloomberg to thank you for your business. Sincerely. Thank you very much."
"Uh... you're welcome," Sandy told him, thinking this was a bizarre call and wondering where it was going. José's accent was thick yet understandable, Sandy told Michael.
Michael, in his talk, told the audience, "At this point in the conversation with Sandy, I am mortified, I wanted to interrupt him to apologize for my employee having bothered him -- this is a matchup that the computers shouldn't have made -- but I knew better than to interrupt Sandy when he's talking."
Sandy told Michael that Hernández continued, "Mr. Weill, I came to the US when I was a kid, and I never graduated from high school. But because of customers like you, I have a steady job and a paycheck. Because of customers like you, I can pay my rent and feed my family. And I have kids of my own now, and because of customers like you, my oldest son is in college - the first in my family ever to go to college."
José continued, "Look, I really don't know anything about banking and Wall Street and stocks. I work in shipping and receiving. I know a lot about shipping and receiving. So in addition to thanking you for your business, I want to tell you that if you ever need help with shipping and receiving, ever need boxes or tape or anything, I want you to call me & I promise I'll take care of you. Here's my personal telephone number and you can call me any time of the day or night. And thank you again for your business."
Now if you know anything of about Sandy Weill's reputation, he's one very tough, no-nonsense, hard-nosed businessman (now retired & 90 years old).
Michael Bloomberg told the audience he was ready for Weill absolutely to tear Michael a new orifice for this type of nonsense and waste-of-time. Imagine - some shipping and receiving guy calling The Chairman of The Board of Citigroup & wasting the time of Sandy Weill.
But Sandy said he was quite touched, and told Michael to personally watch over & take care of this Hernández guy as he's the right type of employee to keep.
Yes, Vermont politicians and Vermont citizens should thank the rest of the nation for visitors & 2nd home owners, and focus on providing world-class hospitality.
Last edited by moguldreamer; 11-29-2023 at 11:08 AM..
There is a thread on P&OC now about a 94-year-old vet being evicted from an ALF that is closing. As this might relate to a "homeless seniors thread", I am linking it here. https://www.city-data.com/forum/poli...-replaced.html
Anyway, leaving politics out of it -- if you want to talk about the possible politics involved in the above, I suggest you do so in the above link -- I think this brings up an issue that should be of concern to everyone who is considering an ALF for either themselves or for a relative. In short, what guarantee do you or they have that the ALF won't go out of business -- and what will happen to you/them in that case?
I am at a loss as to what would happen to those who are evicted who have no friend or relative to advocate for them. Maybe a social worker could step in, but I am not sure there would be enough social workers to 'go around' if this becomes widespread.
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