Phil Ting Archives — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

OPINION Foreclosures are still ravaging San Francisco neighborhoods.

As steward of the city’s property roll and head of the department that appraises every home in San Francisco, I see every day the toll the mortgage crisis is having on real estate values and the city budget.

Thousands of Notices of Default have been filed with my office in the last few years, and every Monday there’s a vivid reminder San Francisco is far from out of the woods on foreclosures as homes are auctioned off on the steps of City Hall.

Two Mondays ago, lifelong Bayview-Hunter’s Point resident Curtis Warren’s home — which my office assessed to be worth $165,000 — was scheduled to be auctioned because he had fallen behind on a $15,000 debt.

Imagine having your home foreclosed upon over a loan less than 10 percent of the value of the property. Imagine a family in your neighborhood being put on the street and a home in your community sitting vacant under such circumstances.

Fortunately, the foreclosure sale of Curtis’s home was canceled. Curtis is a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) — a grassroots organization working to help victims of the mortgage meltdown.

Unfortunately, cases like Curtis’s are all too common. That is why I am fighting foreclosure as your Assessor-Recorder and working to get Sacramento to act, too.

ACCE recently published startling findings in their “The Wall Street Wrecking Ball” report.

San Francisco homeowners are estimated to lose $6.9 billion in property values as a result of foreclosures.

Foreclosure costs San Francisco government an estimated $42 million in lost revenue.

Local government spends an additional $19,229 on increased safety inspections, police and fire calls, and trash removal and maintenance for every foreclosure. This costs San Francisco $73 million.

San Francisco LITERALLY cannot afford this foreclosure crisis, which is why I have joined with Supervisors John Avalos, Malia Cohen and Ross Mirkarimi in support of the following plan of action:

A foreclosure fee to ensure banks pay their fair share: The city should charge a $10,000 to $20,000 fee per foreclosure to defray loss of home values and costs to taxpayers. This fee would raise roughly $2 billion to $4 billion over the next year to partially reimburse local governments.

A strong AG settlement. Any agreement between banks and the 50 attorneys general must include 1) a monetary settlement commensurate with the harm caused by banks; 2) limited release of bank liability; 3) principal reductions fairly distributed to communities hardest hit by predatory lending and foreclosure; and 4) homeowner restitution for irresponsible and illegal foreclosure practices.

Stop preventable foreclosures: The city should require court-based mediation programs to help homeowners modify loans and end the “dual track” process, whereby banks continue foreclosure proceedings while simultaneously negotiating loan modifications.

Wall Street must pay for foreclosure-related blight: Banks must maintain and pay for the cleanup of blighted, vacant homes in neighborhoods.

As long as our economy and housing market is being hampered by foreclosures caused by banks and Wall Street, we must continue to fight for common-sense solutions that protect our neighborhoods and the city.

Phil Ting is assessor-recorder of San Francisco.

OPINION When it passed in 1978, Proposition 13 was advertised as a law to protect fixed-income seniors from losing their homes. In reality, Prop. 13 was a guise to shrink the size of government and cut vital public services like education, health care, transportation, public safety, and recreation. Now, 30 years later, it is one of the principle reasons so many seniors, children, homeless, and other vulnerable California residents are losing their vital safety net.

Using scare tactics showing seniors on the street, supporters of Prop. 13 convinced homeowners that the measure was created for their protection. But homeowners received only 24 percent of the tax refunds after Prop. 13 was passed in 1978. Far from helping seniors and working families under economic pressure, Prop. 13 opened a giant loophole in our tax structure that transferred a significant tax burden away from major corporations and onto individuals.

This tremendous transfer of responsibility from commercial property owners to average families is clear from the data here in San Francisco. Thirty years ago in San Francisco, commercial property owners contributed 59 percent of property tax revenues, and residential property owners contributed 41 percent. Today, we see a virtual flip: commercial property owners contributed just 43 percent of property taxes in 2008, while residential property owners contributed 57 percent. A similar dynamic can be found in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Assessor, in the period between 1975 and today, commercial property contributions to the tax roll have decreased from about 47 percent to just above 30 percent. In that same period, the burden of the tax roll coming from homeowners has increased by more than 15 percent.

As corporate property owners continue to be subsidized by the tax loophole in Prop. 13, these lost tax dollars are handicapping our ability as a state to educate our children, keep our streets safe, protect the most vulnerable, and invest in important infrastructure projects.

At one point, California was considered America’s model economy. We had the best public education system in the country. Our booming economy kept unemployment low and opened the door to opportunity for millions of families. We invested in our people and provided protections for the most needy. The scenario today couldn’t be any more different.

But tough times present the best opportunity for change. I am organizing a grassroots movement of Californians who are behind a "split roll" system that would literally split the property tax rolls — assigning different tax levels to corporations and homeowners and leveling the property tax playing field by eliminating the property tax loophole for corporations. The state Board of qualization estimates that a split roll could generate up to $7.5 billion in annual revenue.

Thousands have already been mobilized in this campaign. Our efforts have been featured in news outlets throughout the state, including the Sacramento Bee, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Modesto Bee, KQED, and the Stockton Record, among many others.

The road to reform is certainly going to be difficult. Over the past few years we have seen numerous attempts to reform Prop. 13, but they have all ultimately foundered due to the tremendous pressure that special interest groups can exert in Sacramento. That’s why we need to organize a powerful grassroots campaign that can change minds one by one. *

Phil Ting is San Francisco Assessor-Recorder. Learn more about his Close the Loophole campaign at www.closetheloophole.com and facebook.com/closetheloophole.

Phil Ting

SF’s foreclosure crisis

Let’s close the Prop. 13 loophole