As long as no Prop 13 gets voted in it should be much better than California.
Everyone complaining about policies in California make it sound like Texas is perfect. I'm pretty sure it could use a lot of improvements on its policies. There are some large factors that have had a disproportionate effect on the housing problems California faces and one of those is Prop 13 so it is much better to focus on avoiding repeating those mistakes than making general blanket statements.
Prop 13 does produce some distortion in the market, but much bigger problem is the sheer inability to build anything. If California had similar zoning and building rules as Texas, Prop 13 would not really be relevant, since houses would not be appreciating in value fast enough for Prop 13 to make any difference.
Prop 13 reduces the supply of housing massively. The carrying cost for any property that was bought more than 20 years ago is negligible. This reduces the incentive to sell when you no longer need the property. This in turn raises prices by reducing supply. This likewise reduces the incentive to sell. As prices go up, the incentive to allow new construction also goes down.
Prop 13 has effectively created a vicious cycle of escalating property values.
Prop 13 has effectively created a vicious cycle of escalating property values.
Sure, but without any numbers, this is simply a just-so story. House prices in Seattle metro have shot through the roof in past 5-6 years, despite Seattle not having Prop 13 law. If house prices can demonstrably go up a lot in a place with no Prop 13-like law, but otherwise rather similar to California when it comes to attitudes towards what kind of houses are allowed to be built, it stands to reason that Prop 13 is unlikely to be main factor in dire California's housing situation.
Humans are really good at crafting narratives explaining complex and uncertain reality. However, just because something sounds superficialy plausible, doesn't mean it is true: it is usually easy to craft an alternative theory, just as plausible as the one at hand.
For example, the narrative of Prop 13 being the root of all California's housing problem very much depends on exactly how much it affects the decision making. It could be a lot, it could be a little, but without knowing exactly (or at least approximately), we're simply in the dark. Maybe it's not Prop 13, but environmental activists running amok? Maybe it's a cartel in the construction industry colluding to keep the construction prices up? Without putting numbers on these, you can't tell which of these has significant impact, and which is irrelevant.
Yes, and I haven’t seen anything suggesting that it’s Prop 13 that’s responsible for majority of the premium in California’s housing costs compared to other states. It’s not nothing, but it pales in comparison to zoning regulations and requirements for environmental traffic etc impact studies that drag on and on.
Agreed but one of the major reasons why residents are opposed to building/zoning residential IS a natural result of Prop 13. It's impressive how much of the past/current problems California is facing can be traced back to Prop 13.
You still get the benefits of increased property values due to strangling supply in the face of demand. Only with prop 13 you stand to net even more money, and if your dad gave you the house he bought in '70 you are taxed like you have a little shitty 20k house in boise.
Most variations of NIMBY-ism arise from a desire to preserve the status quo. That's exactly the kind of rationale that went into enacting Prop 13. The more valuable the status quo is, the more people will fight to maintain it.
Even if there is a bright future ahead, people will limit change. This is in large part because the benefits and costs of change are not uniformly distributed, and when people have a valuable status quo, change represents significant risk.
The attitudes may be in the same direction, but they are far less extreme and taken far less seriously by others. People complain but at the end of the day buildings actually get built in Seattle.
It would require some pretty big shifts in Texas, though. Since most revenue comes from property taxes, the government has an incentive not only to avoid things like Prop 13, but to also encourage building.
Sure, Texas could start imposing an income tax, and raise the sales tax rate, but that would be a huge political hurdle to jump in order to be able to enact CA's terrible housing policies.
EDIT - To be fair. Many of the geographical issues with Chicago, LA, SF and NYC are about being land/water locked on an adjacent side(s). Less of an issue in TX.
And will have all the problems of California, New York, etc. in another 10-20 years after that.