Carroll Fife and Sheng Thao, two members of the Oakland City Council’s far left woke wing, are looking to dramatically increase property taxes in Oakland, in order to build affordable housing.
Coming on top of record-high property taxes that are stressing homeowners of modest means, another surge is likely to drive many owners out of Oakland. I warned my homeowner neighbors on nextdoor.com they won’t be able to complain they didn’t see it coming, when their property taxes soar because of Fife-Thao. Which they will. Let there be no doubt about it: Sheng Thao and Carroll Fife want your money. As much of it as they can get. And they’re just getting started: if Thao is elected, it will be open season on homeowners. This is the essence of Communism: steal from the rich and middle classes to give to the poor, and justify it in the name of social justice.
The fact that redistributionism has never worked anywhere, in the history of the world, is unimportant to Fife and Thao. The old Soviet Union collapsed because of Communism, and the Russia that replaced it is an economic basket case. Ditto for Cuba, a failed state. If this plan goes through, I predict homeowners will revolt—as they did in the late 1970s, when Democrats were raising property taxes every chance they had. Homeowners had enough, and forced through Proposition 13, which severely limited how much property taxes could be increased. The Left didn’t like that, so they came up with the idea of parcel taxes, which do not violate Prop 13. Since then, because of the onslaught of parcel taxes, most California homeowners’ property taxes have increased by 400 or 500 percent, and Leftists such as Fife and Thao continue to see parcel taxes as the magical piggy bank from which to fund their radical schemes.
In Oakland, these Leftist City Council members like parcel taxes because they’re easy to get passed. A rather ignorant voter base—largely young renters—votes for parcel taxes because they think, “What do I care if rich landlords have to pay higher taxes? They can’t raise my rent because of rent control.” So these uninformed voters pass parcel taxes and never think of the damage they do, the unfairness of it all, or the fact that, ultimately, they do end up paying for the increases. Many if not most older homeowners are hardly rich. They struggle to get by, and imposing yet more parcel taxes on them is cruel. Landlords are less likely to make home improvements (paint jobs, new appliances), and besides, homeowners are rightfully resentful of having unending parcel taxes imposed on them. This can sour landlord-tenant relationships, and drives down the desirability of living in Oakland.
There’s another reason why these parcel taxes are so wrong. The money is wasted. You know, I know, and Gov. Newsom—hardly a conservative--knows that money for homelessness disappears into a black hole. Newsom “issued a blanket rejection of local California governments’ plans to curb homelessness,” and today he actually withheld $1 billion in homeless funding—including to Oakland--because cities are doing such a bad job, both at ending homelessness and at accounting for where the money goes. Why throw good money after bad? Cities, Newsom demanded, must come up with “accountability” for the hundreds of millions of dollars that have flowed into their coffers from the State. There has been zero accountability in Oakland, but that isn’t stopping Fife-Thao. Accountability isn’t what they want or care about. Redistribution of wealth is their goal.
Let me explain why Fife-Thao’s proposal would cause a vast increase in parcel taxes. It would transfer money that flows into the General Fund toward building “affordable housing,” whatever that is. That means that the General Fund, which pays for, among other things, police, fire departments and our parks, would experience shortfalls. Although Fife and Thao claim, unconvincingly, that they’ll try their hardest to avoid new parcel taxes, they lie, and they know it. Oakland’s General Fund is already bare-bones thin. Taking away the hundreds of millions of dollars required to build affordable housing would bring it to the brink of insolvency. There are only a few possible sources of replacement income. Business taxes are one, but they would be fiercely resisted, since they would drive even more businesses out of Oakland. The remaining alternative is the woke’s favorite piggy bank: Parcel taxes. They’re coming. Thao and Fife won’t admit it, but then, they’ve built their political careers on deceiving voters.
It’s sad they’re pitting homeowners against renters, because for the most part we’re all liberals. It makes sense that, under the onslaught of a Republican-Trump movement to destroy democracy, Democratic politicians would attempt to unite liberals, not divide us. But that is what Fife, Thao and the other wokes are doing. They don’t care. But we do. This city is going to have to get serious about the looming threat of parcel taxes, or it will lose what’s left of the only thing keeping it financially viable: the homeowning middle class.
Steve Heimoff