Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox
Get our free View from Westminster email
There’s nothing that makes me sadder than billionaires losing some of their money to homelessness initiatives. So you can imagine that this week — during which many very, very rich people have had to quickly offload their properties so they don’t have to pay an extra 4% transaction tax recently voted in by Californians — has been particularly tough for me.
Funds collected from the tax, which comes in on April 1st and is known as Measure ULA, will be put toward affordable housing initiatives and homelessness prevention. But, as Kerri Ann Sullivan, a realtor with Hardee Properties, told local Los Angeles news, there are way better methods of tackling homelessness and home insecurity. For instance, making do with the stuff we already have! “There’s a lot more solutions than taxing people because there’s already money out there and programs out there,” Sullivan told KTLA. “Are they being run the right way? Are they being run in the most efficient way?”
Speaking of efficiency, realtors like Sullivan have come up with some really excellent ways of offloading their clients’ multimillion-dollar properties before April 1st rolls around. This includes chucking in a luxury car with a purchase to sweeten the deal. Just last year, when I was contemplating the purchase of a $14 million mansion in Beverly Hills, I found myself at a crossroads. Would this property make sense for my portfolio? How would it jive with my 200-acre ranch in Wyoming? Could I afford to pay another housekeeper to oversee another tranche of cleaners and gardeners and pool attendants and feng shui consultants when I was still partway through making arrangements for my posthumous cryogenic freezing? Well, you can imagine how my mind was changed when the buyer mentioned they’d be happy to throw in a Ferrari and a Tesla. It’s a small token, yes, but it helped to sow good feeling and, look, I was probably going to buy a couple of luxury vehicles in the near future anyway. I don’t have a driving license but it’s more about the ornamental function when it comes to cars like these. You know, about what you project when friends come round and see them parked in your driveway.
The important thing, anyway, is that we make do with what we have in the homelessness space.
When I think about how to run affordable housing efficiently, I’m confident I know what’s needed to be done. Making apartments smaller, for instance. Telling people to stop coming to California during the winter just because they’re scared of freezing to death on the east coast. Moving homeless encampments to isolated towns could work. I don’t know, contraceptives in the water? There’s a lot that could be done, if only those goddamn communists in local government would think solutions rather than get their panties in a twist about punishing the rich.
And it’s worth pointing out that the hardship shouldered by the people losing money on their mansions is even worse if those mansions are worth more than $10 million. It’s 4% at $5 million and more, rising to 5.5% on those $10 million-plus modest family homes. How many more restrictions on our freedom will the hard-working California taxpayers have to take just because they had the gall to be successful? Is this even America any more?
There is some hope, however. Los Angeles-area realtor Emil Hartoonian told the Hollywood Reporter:“The mansion tax going into effect will clearly create a barrier for sellers looking to unload their homes later this year. Luckily, some areas will remain unaffected, such as Calabasas, Malibu and Hidden Hills.” When I tell you I cried on hearing that Malibu was safe from this civil rights scourge, I mean I sobbed. But it isn’t enough. It isn’t anywhere near enough.
According to multiple real estate agents, sellers across LA are now offering $1-2 million closing bonuses to buyers who complete on their purchases before April 1st. Yes, it’s come to this. And what will we have to do next under this Stalinist regime? Give up our firstborn sons to indentured servitude at the governor’s office? Whip ourselves with sackcloth and ashes in the street because we just happened to be good at acting and singing and plastic surgery — you know, things society values? Move to the Midwest?!
I know I sound like I’m getting dramatic but I see this is a fundamental human rights issue. First they came for the $10 million properties, and then when they came for me, there was no one left to protect my property rights. Remember that quote? Einstein said that when they tried to make him say 4% on a property, too. Look it up. It’s called history.
