Reverse mortgage.
> How is this fair at any level?
How is it fair that working people have to pay 10x for housing than she did when she was young? How is it fair that the money goes to her inheritance while she made her working neighbors pay her share of taxes?
Of course, let's let yet another corporate land grab take even more residential property off the market for profit-based motives. This can't possibly do any more harm than locking property taxes at the time of sale.
Where I live, we are looking at locking property taxes once you hit a specified age (65) and have under a specified income ($40k+/-). The current debates revolve around exactly what those numbers are and at what level the taxes get locked. The goal is to protect the elderly who have already contributed to the economy and society for 40+ years and not force them into a financial situation forcing them to sell their home just to pay even more property taxes that they have paid for the entire ownership.
A number of states have this. Basically if you are low income, where that may be calculcaed differently depending on cost of living of the county you live in, you can defer or freeze property taxes.
Oregon has a deferral where the delayed property tax comes from the value of the house when it is sold or I guess when you die. https://grantsforseniors.org/property-tax-relief-for-seniors....
Washington has a similar thing.
"All Washington counties offer senior citizens and disabled households property tax exemptions. Eligibility is based on your age or disability status, home ownership, residency in Washington, and income level. Seniors who are at least age 61, or retired from regular gainful employment by reason of a disability, with an income of $64,000 or less are eligible."
The idea is to help people stay in their houses. This is really really important. And if you can afford it, you should be paying property taxes. I'm lucky I can afford mine, but I highly support this strategy.
In my state I occasionally see people in online discussions saying they can't afford their property taxes - I think a lot of people aren't aware of these programs, people are amazed when I post a few pointers and tell them about it.
Meeting the basic needs of the population, by having enough housing and preventing hoarding of housing by wealthy individuals, is not a "coporare land grab."
Quite the opposite.
We are clearly talking about different things. I'm talking about protecting single home homeowners on a fixed income from being forced out of their homes. Staying in the only home she owns is not hoarding.
Telling people that the solution is to sell their home to an insurance company as a solution is most certainly a corporate land grab.
You seem to be arguing about people/corporations that own multiple homes or even entire portfolios of property. These are not the same argument.
The solution is not necessarily to sell, they should only do that if they want.
If their asset is gaining in price so much that the tax burden is getting high, then tax deferement until a liquidity event both keeps them in their home, but also keeps them honest about how much they are taking away from the rest of society by taking that piece of land.
> Of course, let's let yet another corporate land grab take even more residential property off the market for profit-based motives.
The premise does not warrant this conclusion.
They don’t, they move to the ghetto like she did and start the gentrification cycle again