Sorry kids. We Millennials have failed you.
We complained about rents being too high, but we couldn’t be bothered to vote. See how much we’re whining now? Just wait until you grow up and need to find a place to live. Don’t worry, let me read you a bedtime story.
The Tale of Two Houses in California
Here’s two houses, both built within the same year, in 1965 and 1964. Although both houses have similar stats in housing size, there’s one big difference — property taxes.
- Grandma’s House
House 1: 2016 property taxes are $1,575.02 - Grandma’s Younger Neighbor
House 2: 2016 property taxes are $8,949.49
What’s going on here? In California, our grandparents voted in a law that freezes your tax bill at the time of purchase. That means your grandparents get to pay the same taxes forever (yes, they are going nowhere).
Here’s the kicker. Let’s say you want to buy Grandma’s house today. Using Zillow’s house estimate, and this nifty tax calculator, your new property tax bill will be about $12,600, an 800% increase in taxes annually.
If Grandma ever wanted to move, she sure as hell is going to think twice about moving seeing as her taxes may jump from $1,575 to $12,600 for an equivalent house. The problem for us young people is that when people don’t move, land developers can’t create more houses, more apartments, etc.
Howard Jarvis, an anti-taxation lobbying group, has been celebrating $528 billion dollars in avoided taxes for California. What this really means is — $528 billion dollars avoided by old people. Sorry young people, you’re not worth mentioning because you don’t vote anyways.
Although the headlines are showing complaints about rent and housing — it’s really a war of the old versus young.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. All across the world, the older generation are consistently heads to the polls to enact laws protecting themselves against newcomers (the young, the immigrants, new technology, etc.). Millennials, with less income, tend to travel more for work and leisure in the age of globalization. Regulations against AirBnB are making the cost of travelling go up. We use services like Uber and Lyft to help get us around be because we tend to have less possessions (cars, being one of them). That’s getting chipped away. The older generation of hotel owners and taxi medallion owners are putting up a fierce fight against services we use. They’re trying to force us to return us to their old, obsolete world.
I don’t know what happened. Maybe we’re too busy finding ways to pay skyrocketing rent. Maybe we’re too busy paying off our massive college loans.
We’ve lost the battle against these boomers who march to the polls with every Brexit-like anti-immigrant, every omg-they’re-destroying-the-character-of-our-neighborhood news headlines. Maybe our generation has given in to the blissful doldrums of mechanically working daily to pay off rent and our loans.
Sorry kids.
PS. Grandma’s house may come up for sale when you get older. Today, it will cost you about $1,500,000. It’ll keep going up though, so you better start saving.
