Category: Local issues

Nobody home?

27 August, 2009 (10:00) | Compulsory purchase, Eminent domain, Local issues, London, Real estate taxes, Rental, Speculation | No comments

Why would you buy an expensive home in a tony London neighborhood and then leave it empty?
 

Vacancies even in my tony neighborhood?
That concerns me.
 
Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to peep through Mayfair’s lace curtains:
 
LONDON — At an abandoned home with yellowing newspapers on its front stoop, Paul Palmer peeks through a mail slot [...]

Anti-black or anti-green? Part 2, what did we win?

25 August, 2009 (09:55) | Chapter 40B, Desegregation, False Claims Act, Inclusionary zoning, Local issues, Westchester County, Workforce housing, Zoning | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1].
 
Yesterday we delved into Westchester County’s recent settlement, as reported in the New York Times, of a desegregation lawsuit.  Via a clever legal end run, it was brought against the county by the Anti-Discrimination Center, using the False Claims Act:
 
The case was litigated by Mr. Gurian and the center’s lawyer, John [...]

Anti-black or anti-green? Part 1, we won … didn’t we?

24 August, 2009 (12:36) | Chapter 40B, Desegregation, False Claims Act, Inclusionary zoning, Local issues, Westchester County, Workforce housing, Zoning | No comments

Forty years after Operation Breakthrough, the question remains: is exclusionary zoning (de jure or de facto in high land prices) racist, or merely elitist?

Racial discrimination, or economic?
Westchester County house values

Only one is illegal, and in the case of Westchester County, as reported in the New York Times, it took a curious private-citizen [...]

Subsidy or surcharge? Part 2, should we?

20 August, 2009 (11:14) | Local issues, Massachusetts, Real estate taxes, Tenure, Theory, Zoning | No comments

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1].
 
Yesterday’s post examined the hypothetical of raising property taxes while exempting a particular class of elderly homeowners from the increased costs they would vote to impose.  As shown in a fascinating quantitative analysis, Massachusetts Proposition 2½, Simulating Overrides with Low-Income Elderly Exemptions, published in the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston article in [...]

Subsidy or surcharge? Part 1, how much?

19 August, 2009 (09:53) | Local issues, Massachusetts, Real estate taxes, Tenure, Theory, Zoning | No comments

Once we have accepted the principle that tax burdens should vary by taxpayer group – and everyone except a few economists have so accepted, at least in the world of political reality – we must choose who gains the more favored treatment – and how we package it.

Long ago, when I matriculated to [...]