Saturday, October 10, 2009

Sometimes it's Grey

Yesterday morning and this morning it's grey out, even here in Southern California.I took this picture on my way home from my run to the beach. You can see this very modern - not even finished - building in this basically little house neighborhood of Venice. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, one benefit (the declining quality of California schools, universities, and other infrastructure are among the disadvantages) of the 1978 Prop. 13 is that people in small houses whose property value soared, weren't forced to leave because their property taxes stayed the same.
So little houses like this blue one and the white one below (neighbors of the big one in the top photo), are still here in this area very close to the beach. As long as you stay in your house, the property tax doesn't go up, even if the value of the land makes these million dollar properties.
So relatively low income folks can enjoy living near the beach as well as the rich ones. But as values go up and parents die off, some are tempted to sell and take the profit, and the neighborhood slowly changes. But much more slowly than it would have. At least that's my guess on why these tiny houses are still here.

The sky did get blue in the afternoon.

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