By Philip Behrens
San Francisco is a city begging for high-density housing. It has a dedicated water supply, two bridges, is located on the Pacific Ocean with a deep bay, is a maze of converging highways, and has several rail lines, including Amtrak, Bart, and MUNI. By any stretch of the imagination, it should have very high-density housing as a matter of both equity and efficiency. Who are the players that fund the infrastructure? The federal taxpayer, the state taxpayer, and the local taxpayer all deserve a say in the property taxation of San Francisco as they have all funded the complicated and expensive infrastructure of the city.
Housing-density has become more of a public issue as of late in the effort to reduce greenhouse gases and reduce energy use to battle climate change. Aside from the benefits to the climate of reduced greenhouse gases and reduced energy usage brought about by high-density housing, higher density housing in San Francisco would enable more people to walk to work and therefore make more people happier and healthier. When I worked in San Francisco, I walked to work, it was a joy! I had excellent health as I walked to work each day, thus getting exercise even if I skipped the gym. When my co-workers complained about the long drive or the crowded trains filled with coughing people, I remained quiet, giving silent thanks for my situation. I want the young gay people of today to have this same benefit.
The density of housing near transit centers is now a matter of public policy in California. The recent laws signed by Gov. Newsome to increase housing density are a paltry attempt to rectify a problem that has grown worse with each passing year. Senate Bill 10, authored by Castrocreeper political leader State Senator Scott Weiner, is one of the three recently signed bills. Of the three Senate Bills, Senate Bill 10 wins the prize for disingenuousness. This bill allows localities, only if they should so choose, to replace a single-family home with up to 10 units of housing. How clever of State Senator Weiner to make the housing provision entirely voluntary! The Castrocreepers have not seen fit to increase housing density in the Castro since at least 1970 so I am not going out on a limb when I say that State Senator Weiner has set up the hoity-toity lah-de-dah snooty snoots of Castrocreepersociety for another 50 years of exclusionary multi-colored Victorian mansions. Hip, hip, hurray for the Castrocreepers!
It shows the power of the Castrocreepers and the skill of their leader State Senator Scott Weiner that San Francisco has Victorian mansions within walking or biking distance of the downtown. I am sure that the Creepers feel very self-satisfied about doing their share to combat global warming while biking to work on their $5000 Trek bicycles after leaving their multi-colored Victorian mansions for the day.
Young gay people look to San Francisco for various things. Some may look to it as a refuge from places like Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard was beaten and crucified on a fence in the middle of a cold winter and left to die and others may look to it as a gay-friendly economic powerhouse to play out their career dreams. San Francisco was a delightful city to live and work in when I arrived in 1980 and it still is. However, the structure of the property tax system and other factors have limited the supply of housing and therefore made it so expensive that most people have been priced out of the city.
I am sure that the Castrocreepers have much more important things to be concerned about than young gays seeking refuge in San Francisco. For example, while they are oblivious to climate change when the issue of housing in their own neighborhood comes up, they are very concerned about climate change when it comes to making it easier for themselves to ride their $5000 Trek bicycles to work. In addition to climate change, there are other issues, such as how to properly address people based on their perceived gender preference. I am sure that Matthew Shepard would not have cared about how he was addressed and would have been happy to have an outstretched hand welcome him to San Francisco at the point when his crucifixion began. I would even venture to say that he would have accepted living in an apartment building that was not painted five different coordinated colors. The Castrocreepers would blithely point out that now you can get married to a man in Wyoming, but I see Wyoming as becoming safe for gay people at least not for another 200 years, if ever, despite the passing of laws and court rulings. Do the Castrocreepers think that the murderers of Matthew Shepard would have followed the passing of pro-gay laws and pro-gay court rulings?
So, we have a gay refugee issue, how can we lower the cost of housing in San Francisco? We can begin by ending the subsidization of the Castrocreepers through the property tax system. We can do this by changing the local property tax system from an assessed value basis to a flat charge best use basis to disallow the heavy subsidies that are paid to Castrocreepersociety.
How much do we subsidize the Castrocreepers? The real estate website Redfin states that the average price of a home in the Castro neighborhood is $2.15M. At a current property tax rate of 1.1801%, the annual tax bill is $25, 372 ($2,150,000 x %1.1801 = $25,372). If the city of San Francisco taxed property based on the flat charge best use assessment method, we would find that the Castrocreepers are very heavily subsidized indeed compared to the assessed value method of taxation used today. For example, based on a best use assessment method, I would conservatively rate any building within a mile of the Castro District MUNI station as capable of supporting a 25-story building. The Castro neighborhood is a hilly area, and I would rate the higher elevations of the Castro at taller heights, perhaps 50 stories, for the heights of the buildings to follow the slope of the hills. This is so that the neighborhood would be more pleasing aesthetically as the buildings would follow the natural slope of the land. But let us leave aside the issue of varying building heights for now for the purpose of keeping our example simple.
Even at a 25-story height limit we find that the subsidies paid to Castrocreepersociety are incredibly high. To present an example for the purpose of illustration, we will use a fixed height of 25 floors. Based on one unit per floor for a 25-story building, we arrive at a figure of $634,304 that would be collected in property taxes from a Castro residential building lot based on a best use assessment basis ($2,150,000 x 25 floors x 1.1801% = $634,304). From the total tax of $634,304, subtract the annual bill of $25,372 on the same sized lot taxed at the current assessed value basis and you get a whopping $608,932 subsidy. Wow! Even I am amazed at the good tax deal the Creepers are getting.
So, to sum up, I am proposing that any residential lot within one mile of the Castro MUNI Station be taxed at a flat charge of $634,304. The tax would be for a standard lot, double lots would be charged double the single residential lot charge. The tax change would reward the inclusion of more housing units on lots and make those who wanted an Atherton style house on their lot pay more for that space.
For example, if we take one floor of our 25-story building and divide it into two units, the owner of each unit would pay $12,686 in taxes, half of the $25,372 charge for the Castrocreeper mansion. Under the best use assessment method, the city of San Francisco would be getting $634,300 ($12,686 x 2 units per floor x 25 floors at $25,372 = $634,300 from this lot instead of the $25,372 it receives under the assessed value method. There is a $4 difference from $634,304 figure in the above paragraph due to rounding.
The city of San Francisco would get so much more money under the flat charge best use system of taxing property that they would wonder why they had not moved the Castrocreepers to Atherton years ago. If we split each floor into 2 units of 1500 square feet each, the property tax for the homeowner would be 50% of the Castrocreeper payment of $25,372 for a Victorian mansion, improving affordability. Fifteen hundred square feet is a very generously sized apartment. This is all based on an average residential building lot size of 3000 square feet. As we shall see in the following paragraph, the room to increase affordability would grow even more based on the total revenue stream to the city increasing by 25-fold.
How much would the revenue stream grow? Let us look at the difference in revenue streams based on a sample of 100 residential lots at both the assessed value method and the best use method. At the assessed value method, 100 lots would bring in $2,537,200 ($25,372 (tax charge for one Victorian mansion) x 100). Compare this with the revenue under the best use method which brings in $63,430,400 ($634,304(tax charge for one lot with a 25-story building) x 100). Does the city budget need to increase by a factor of 25 because of the extra people? Absolutely not. I will not go into that issue here, but I would say that the excess not needed for increased services should go into reducing property taxes to further increase affordability. More than any other factor, increasing housing affordability would allow more gay people in Matthew Shepard’s position to live in San Francisco.
San Franciscan’s like to preen and pat themselves on the back for their exceptional racial tolerance but I see a different picture. I would count Asians, East Indians, and Latinos as “Honorary Whites” for the purpose of demographic analysis. Based on this viewpoint, San Francisco is not a fountain of racial tolerance but a perpetrator of a slow silent and very effective form of genocide against Blacks. From comprising 13.4% of the population of San Francisco in 1970, Blacks have declined to 5.6% of the population in the 2020 census. In several hundred years, Blacks will no longer be a concern as they will have faded away. While the current Black population seems to be content with the current racial genocide plan of San Francisco, I am still arguing for increased affordability of housing in San Francisco both for gay people in Matthew Shepard’s position, for the Blacks and their children who want to return to live in San Francisco, and for Mother Earth.
Taxing residential property based on the best use assessment method would make real estate speculation less attractive. It has been said that Americans invented real estate speculation, but I think it is time for a change. The speculators could still speculate, they would just have to pay their fair share of the expensive infrastructure of San Francisco. No longer could they largely reduce their taxes by letting a lot sit vacant for years. San Francisco is no longer a string of cattle farms on the coast of the Pacific so we should not tax the property as if it were.
To answer the question I posed at the beginning of this article, no, I do not think the Castrocreepers are that pretty that they are justified in receiving tax breaks of $608,932 for each of their Victorian mansions. I think they should pay their fair share of the property taxes of San Francisco. Instituting a best use property tax system in San Francisco would benefit not only the gay people who are fleeing places like Wyoming but would also benefit the entire nation as San Francisco became more of an economic engine bustling with creative young people and less of a resort for ultra-wealthy gays. Saint Francis was a man who invited us to consider the needs of all of creation as we go about our daily business. I think we need to reflect on his teachings as we consider whether to retain the assessed value method of property taxation or implement the fixed charge best use tax assessment policy.
Copyright by Castrocreepersociety.com