Development Rumours

[OliverD]

Originally Posted by Corker

Agreed and such a program doesn't have to be very complicated. A property owner applies, provides evidence of their income, such as their most recent personal tax assessment showing their income is below a threshold, other parameters are met (residential property, owner occupied, owner above a certain age or unable to work due to a disability, etc), and the city could provide a deferral of x% of taxes, placing a lien on the property. Each year the property owner would sign a form affirming the circumstances remain the same, and the city would add the interest and the additional property tax to the lien. Once the person moves on, physically or otherworldly, the property changes hands, the lien is exercised and the city gets its money. As with any assistance program it wouldn't be perfect but it would help those who are less able to generate the income to cover rising costs stay in their homes until other circumstances dictate they move.

I say the city but this is a provincial issue so it would be better run by the Province. With such a program in place the assessment cap could be phased out and similar properties would pay similar taxes.

NB has a fairly straightforward program similar to this: https://www.gnb.ca/en/topic/family-home-...operty-tax-deferral-program-seniors.html

[Colin May]

Originally Posted by Corker

This isn't a perk, it's a limitation. Other plans I'm familiar with provide the retiree with the option of integrating. CPP and the HRM pension are separate plans so there shouldn't be an expectation of integration. For the plans that offer the choice, it's just math. An actuary for the plan provides two scenarios - one with no integration and one with integration. The integration option provides more money in the early years and then lowers the pension payment when the individual reaches 65. From the pension plan's perspective the overall cost is the same. From the retiree's perspective, they may like to get more money in those early years, while others are ok to go with the pension as is (maybe they plan to continue working elsewhere) and then get the bump when they are eligible for CPP.

For the long service award, most have been eliminated across Canada, but though that transition is often a point of contention (labour disruptions) it is typically resolved during the union negotiations, and there has usually been a bump in pay or other benefits to offset the lost long service award benefit. The elimination of the award fixes one aspect of perceived excessive benefits but not without a cost.

I feel like these property taxes and government employee compensation topics need their own thread as they pop up as random tangents from time to time. Apologies if I'm feeding into it.

A long service award results in the employer making an annual determination of the liability and the employer is not allowed to establish a fund to meet the annual payout...the cost is an unfunded liability well into 8 figures in HRM. I cannot find any other level of government that has such an award. Businesses across Canada long ago stopped offering a defined benefit pension except for those who were already enrolled in such a plan.
In my experience an employee is better off managing his/her retirement account with matching contributions.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Corker

Agreed and such a program doesn't have to be very complicated. A property owner applies, provides evidence of their income, such as their most recent personal tax assessment showing their income is below a threshold, other parameters are met (residential property, owner occupied, owner above a certain age or unable to work due to a disability, etc), and the city could provide a deferral of x% of taxes, placing a lien on the property. Each year the property owner would sign a form affirming the circumstances remain the same, and the city would add the interest and the additional property tax to the lien. Once the person moves on, physically or otherworldly, the property changes hands, the lien is exercised and the city gets its money. As with any assistance program it wouldn't be perfect but it would help those who are less able to generate the income to cover rising costs stay in their homes until other circumstances dictate they move.

I say the city but this is a provincial issue so it would be better run by the Province. With such a program in place the assessment cap could be phased out and similar properties would pay similar taxes.

Sounds like an interesting side effect to this system would be to force retired people back into the workforce if they don’t meet the criteria for the deferral. So either they take a job from a younger person or if nobody wants to hire them because of their age, they have the choice of being financially forced out of their home by the government, or making other tough choices like groceries etc? All because somebody in government made the choice to flood the country with a huge population increase and artificially create a housing crisis which blew up home values?

So Canadians who want to buy their first homes are forced out of the market, and people whose home values skyrocketed while they were just living their lives are suddenly faced with untenable tax costs to reflect “fair market value” in the environment of everything else literally doubling in price. Meanwhile the folks at the top continue along unscathed while those of us in the middle to the bottom (hint: the middle and the bottom are becoming one and the same) are squabbling amongst themselves about who does or doesn’t have the right to have a decent place to live, and a reasonable quality of life. Think about it.

The first rebuttal will be “well they can just sell their homes and reap the rewards of the value - they are wealthy people”…. People just want to live in their homes, and had a reasonable plan to stay in the home they wanted to as long as they can until the world went crazy around them. Now they are being told that they don’t deserve to be able to do that because the government fucked over the younger generations. That is wrong, and the government needs to fix it, but the answer is not to force seniors out of their homes, or force them to apply for what amounts to social assistance and a lien on their home to (maybe) allow them to stay there. IMHO the government’s responsibility is to tax reasonably, and be fiscally responsible with the tax that is given to them. None of this has happened in the past 10+ years, and it sounds like many of us are on board with it not happening in the near future. It’s sad, actually.

Another question: So we remove caps (HRM has already decided to increase the tax rate with the caps btw), and force people to apply for deferrals, thus all homes are taxed based upon “fair market value” from now on. The city suddenly has a huge increase in their budget to do ‘whatever’ with. What happens if/when home values decrease due to supply/demand relaxing, etc? They will have to make up for the decreased tax income… do they adjust for a lower budget, or do they increase tax rates to keep the same cash flow coming in? What do you think will happen here?

I’ll wrap up my opinion by saying that I don’t have much confidence that Halifax politicians have the ability to manage any of this in an efficient, reasonable manner. YMMV.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Now they are being told that they don’t deserve to be able to do that because the government fucked over the younger generations.

I think this is an odd way to frame the notion of simply paying the same tax rates as somebody else. Ironically the poorest seniors tend to be excluded from this as rental buildings of 4 units or more are not covered and in the NS market right now those tax bills are likely passed on to tenants.

A longer write up: https://www.turnerdrake.com/who-wears-the-cap-now/

The unvarnished truth is that the CAP exists, and persists, for political reasons that do not get said out loud. It is popular because the impression of tax savings is visible and intuitive for a large voting bloc, and the resultant costs are scattered out of sight. While we do not want to understate the validity of challenges it was meant to address, only a minority of owners are ever truly at risk of displacement or material hardship without the CAP in its current form.

For most, the appeal is simpler: people like paying less property tax, and they like having a sense of stability about what they will owe next year. All else equal, acting on those instincts does not make anyone greedy or immoral; it makes them normal. But all else is not equal. One person’s relief is another’s burden, and the truly vulnerable homeowners that the CAP was originally designed to protect have become a convenient human shield for the much larger group whose primary motivation is simply their desire to not lose a nice‑to‑have benefit.

If the CAP disappeared overnight, owner‑occupied properties in HRM would, on average, pay about $550 more per year in tax. That is not nothing, but it is less than the additional tax that is already being heaped onto apartment units which house the vast majority of lower‑ and fixed‑income households. The status quo is more Sheriff of Nottingham than Robin Hood.

For many long‑tenured owners, the reality is even less defensible. The CAP does not stop at keeping the bill to a reasonable level of growth, but has quietly pushed them into paying even less tax over time.

I don't think it makes sense to conflate HRM spending arguments with this as they affect everybody and the burden of the excess spending, if it's a real thing, disproportionately falls on the less-recently-capped or non-qualifying residents. Instead when focused on the cap we should imagine that any municipality in NS collects $X, they set the mill rate such that they collect $X, and then the taxable assessment cap results in some people paying less than their share and others paying more to make up the shortfall. The people over or under paying will be a mix of of well-off and struggling folks, as there's no means testing.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think this is an odd way to frame the notion of simply paying the same tax rates as somebody else.

I don't agree. I think it's a big picture assessment/opinion of what is happening in general. These are all symptoms of a much bigger problem with a side effect of generations resenting each other for something that was not the fault of the average person who has been just trying to live their life.

Rather than focusing on the micro aspects of who should or shouldn't benefit from tax breaks and how to squeeze the most tax out of the population by making the ones who are less able to keep up apply for relief and hope that they qualify (and guarantee that the government gets their full tax windfall when the person is on their deathbed)... maybe we should be looking at why we've been forced into this corner.

Just my opinion, whether you agree or not... it's fine. Oh, and I apologize from my salty, emotion-laden language. I'll try to be colder and more clinical in the future.

All the best.

[Colin May]

As a homeowner I have always viewed the cap as a dumb idea. The province should phase it out and at the same time impose spending controls on municipalities. The feds and the provinces should stay in their lane and cease funding what I call 'nice projects for the middle class' ..... the country has more serious problems.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Colin May

As a homeowner I have always viewed the cap as a dumb idea. The province should phase it out and at the same time impose spending controls on municipalities. The feds and the provinces should stay in their lane and cease funding what I call 'nice projects for the middle class' ..... the country has more serious problems.

In the end, I don’t really care how they go about it. I just want reasonable taxation, along with a reasonable quality of life that the masses have access to, judge that how you may. At the moment it feels like we are on the trajectory of becoming a near third world country (if it’s PC to say that anymore), and our young people need to be able to live in a country where they feel that they have a future and some hope to live a good happy life. Our older people also need to live their best life simultaneously. My grievance is that this is all feeling less and less possible these days. I hope I’m wrong, and am always happy to be proven wrong if I am…

[icetea93]

It appears the airport site is no longer an option and the investment group is now looking at other sites around HRM

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scot...ound-pitch-for-halifax-stadium-9.7212996

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Sounds like an interesting side effect to this system would be to force retired people back into the workforce if they don’t meet the criteria for the deferral. So either they take a job from a younger person or if nobody wants to hire them because of their age, they have the choice of being financially forced out of their home by the government, or making other tough choices like groceries etc? All because somebody in government made the choice to flood the country with a huge population increase and artificially create a housing crisis which blew up home values?

So Canadians who want to buy their first homes are forced out of the market, and people whose home values skyrocketed while they were just living their lives are suddenly faced with untenable tax costs to reflect “fair market value” in the environment of everything else literally doubling in price. Meanwhile the folks at the top continue along unscathed while those of us in the middle to the bottom (hint: the middle and the bottom are becoming one and the same) are squabbling amongst themselves about who does or doesn’t have the right to have a decent place to live, and a reasonable quality of life. Think about it.

The first rebuttal will be “well they can just sell their homes and reap the rewards of the value - they are wealthy people”…. People just want to live in their homes, and had a reasonable plan to stay in the home they wanted to as long as they can until the world went crazy around them. Now they are being told that they don’t deserve to be able to do that because the government fucked over the younger generations. That is wrong, and the government needs to fix it, but the answer is not to force seniors out of their homes, or force them to apply for what amounts to social assistance and a lien on their home to (maybe) allow them to stay there. IMHO the government’s responsibility is to tax reasonably, and be fiscally responsible with the tax that is given to them. None of this has happened in the past 10+ years, and it sounds like many of us are on board with it not happening in the near future. It’s sad, actually.

Another question: So we remove caps (HRM has already decided to increase the tax rate with the caps btw), and force people to apply for deferrals, thus all homes are taxed based upon “fair market value” from now on. The city suddenly has a huge increase in their budget to do ‘whatever’ with. What happens if/when home values decrease due to supply/demand relaxing, etc? They will have to make up for the decreased tax income… do they adjust for a lower budget, or do they increase tax rates to keep the same cash flow coming in? What do you think will happen here?

I’ll wrap up my opinion by saying that I don’t have much confidence that Halifax politicians have the ability to manage any of this in an efficient, reasonable manner. YMMV.

Excellent post, Mark. I get the impression that many of those posting sentiments to throw out capped assessments are planning students with little real-world experience in home ownership and the financial burden associated with that even with an assessment cap.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Colin May

As a homeowner I have always viewed the cap as a dumb idea. The province should phase it out and at the same time impose spending controls on municipalities. The feds and the provinces should stay in their lane and cease funding what I call 'nice projects for the middle class' ..... the country has more serious problems.

I don’t think any taxpayer would have a serious issue with a modest/CPI increase in taxes annually. When you are looking at people calling to eliminate the cap and phase in a tripling of tax burden even if it is over a few years, it is a bit much. I would absolutely support municipal spending controls, especially on staff salaries.

[markbeaver]

Originally Posted by

Originally Posted by Dmajackson
This might be land banking or a development could be imminent;

5521-5535 SULLIVAN STREET, HALIFAX had demolition permits issued this week. This backs onto the vacant lot at 5530 KAYE STREET which fronts the Hydrostone Market retail area (on the non-historic south side of the park). The lots total 10'800 sq ft with two street frontages and it has Corridor zoning. Summerville;10491796

This is another Tsimklis tear down. It was in Allnovascotia. It’s land banking…although he did say that he has backers, which suggests there is a group that may include developers and Tsmiklis swings the hammer.

The Sullivan Street houses are no more. Fewer affordable places to live on the peninsula and more people looking for somewhere affordable to live. If I knew a development was imminent, I wouldn’t mind so much, but I presume this will be gravelled vacant land for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps Mr Mayor in his quest for a balanced budget could property-tax these torn-down housing lots at their purchase price into the future, instead of giving the demolisher a significant discount on the value of the now “vacant land”.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/markbeaver/55295893311/in/dateposted-public/

[ArchAficionado]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

I don’t think any taxpayer would have a serious issue with a modest/CPI increase in taxes annually. When you are looking at people calling to eliminate the cap and phase in a tripling of tax burden even if it is over a few years, it is a bit much. I would absolutely support municipal spending controls, especially on staff salaries.

I think eliminating the cap is probably the wrong answer, as it is too heavy of a change to levy even over a period of time, as you say. These runaway differences between assessed tax and actual value are largely a consequence of the runaway housing market. The delta wouldn't be severe if we'd experienced slow and steady growth over time.

That being said, the current solution where a family in their 30s who just moved to a neighborhood is paying twice or even more than twice as much property tax as a family who has lived there for 20+ years is at best unfair and at worst actively harming the next generation who is already systemically in dire straits as pertains to home ownership. Our society out not to subsidize the established/older at the cost of the younger/newcomer in quite so many ways.

[OliverD]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Sounds like an interesting side effect to this system would be to force retired people back into the workforce if they don’t meet the criteria for the deferral. So either they take a job from a younger person or if nobody wants to hire them because of their age, they have the choice of being financially forced out of their home by the government, or making other tough choices like groceries etc? All because somebody in government made the choice to flood the country with a huge population increase and artificially create a housing crisis which blew up home values?

So Canadians who want to buy their first homes are forced out of the market, and people whose home values skyrocketed while they were just living their lives are suddenly faced with untenable tax costs to reflect “fair market value” in the environment of everything else literally doubling in price. Meanwhile the folks at the top continue along unscathed while those of us in the middle to the bottom (hint: the middle and the bottom are becoming one and the same) are squabbling amongst themselves about who does or doesn’t have the right to have a decent place to live, and a reasonable quality of life. Think about it.

The first rebuttal will be “well they can just sell their homes and reap the rewards of the value - they are wealthy people”…. People just want to live in their homes, and had a reasonable plan to stay in the home they wanted to as long as they can until the world went crazy around them. Now they are being told that they don’t deserve to be able to do that because the government fucked over the younger generations. That is wrong, and the government needs to fix it, but the answer is not to force seniors out of their homes, or force them to apply for what amounts to social assistance and a lien on their home to (maybe) allow them to stay there. IMHO the government’s responsibility is to tax reasonably, and be fiscally responsible with the tax that is given to them. None of this has happened in the past 10+ years, and it sounds like many of us are on board with it not happening in the near future. It’s sad, actually.

Another question: So we remove caps (HRM has already decided to increase the tax rate with the caps btw), and force people to apply for deferrals, thus all homes are taxed based upon “fair market value” from now on. The city suddenly has a huge increase in their budget to do ‘whatever’ with. What happens if/when home values decrease due to supply/demand relaxing, etc? They will have to make up for the decreased tax income… do they adjust for a lower budget, or do they increase tax rates to keep the same cash flow coming in? What do you think will happen here?

I’ll wrap up my opinion by saying that I don’t have much confidence that Halifax politicians have the ability to manage any of this in an efficient, reasonable manner. YMMV.

I don't think it would be tenable for the city to simply absorb an increase in budget. Perhaps this is an area where the province needs to step in and ensure that the tax rate is decreased to offset homes being taxed at their fair market value.

Regardless of the cap, we often hear fear mongering about property taxes forcing seniors out of their homes but I've yet to see much evidence of this actually happening. While I'm sure there may be some isolated incidents it isn't reasonable to presume that seniors en masse have an affordability crisis that differs from that of the working class especially when the average Canadian man aged 25-34 makes less than the average man over 65 (source).

While I don't think we should explicitly incentivize seniors to leave their homes we also should not incentivize (subsidize) them to stay via property tax breaks. If people want to stay in their family homes well past retirement that is fine but it isn't as common as it once was to own only a single home in one's lifetime, and I think people are more amenable to downsizing as they age. I've seen several examples of this in my own life recently. I think this is why it's important we build a healthy mix of housing options with both rental and ownership opportunities – give seniors downsizing options that are aspirational and desirable.

I don't know what the answer to the cap system is but I do know that it's entirely inequitable to penalize people for moving, and to subsidize people that don't need those subsidies. It is entirely reasonable to implement mechanisms to help those homeowners who truly cannot afford their property taxes though.

[OliverD]

Originally Posted by ArchAficionado

Our society out not to subsidize the established/older at the cost of the younger/newcomer in quite so many ways.

Particularly when a large portion of those being subsidized don't need it!

[Saul Goode]

Originally Posted by ArchAficionado

I These runaway differences between assessed tax and actual value are largely a consequence of the runaway housing market. The delta wouldn't be severe if we'd experienced slow and steady growth over time.

No, not "largely"; the data don't bear that out. While the effect was exaggerated by the market explosion during and post-pandemic, the disparity was already very significant before that. Until then, "slow and steady growth over time" is exactly what we'd experienced over the 20 years since the cap came into effect, and its distorting effect was well established in that time.

As I've probably bored people on this forum by saying repeatedly, the cap is an abomination and the tragedy is that its effects were 100% predictable (and actually predicted; it's simple math). Anyway, it most definitely should be abolished.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Excellent post, Mark. I get the impression that many of those posting sentiments to throw out capped assessments are planning students with little real-world experience in home ownership and the financial burden associated with that even with an assessment cap.

It's the speculative nature of it that I simply cannot grasp. It's akin to "unrealized gains" in a sense that if someone your age bought your house for $150k a long while back but now it's assessed at $600k well what good is that for you unless you sell? Suddenly your property taxes start skyrocketing for no other reason because it's not as if the same old home required twice the infrastructure in utilities or whatever but you're being charged extra as if that's so.

However, at the same time anyone who's a new home buyer gets hit immediately with insanely higher rates on the same block because of property taxes evaluations only.

The problem is how we tax things, not that young people or old people should be singled out and punished like some kind of crabs in a bucket. The system needs complete reworking.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

I don’t think any taxpayer would have a serious issue with a modest/CPI increase in taxes annually. When you are looking at people calling to eliminate the cap and phase in a tripling of tax burden even if it is over a few years, it is a bit much. I would absolutely support municipal spending controls, especially on staff salaries.

Staff salaries both public and private are atrocious as-is. My gripe with the public service is there seems to be almost no quality control for work and no accountability for poor performance. We should have the best of the best working in the public service but instead it's become this fiefdom of taxpayer funding jobs programs for certain people and their closest friends and family members only.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

Staff salaries both public and private are atrocious as-is. My gripe with the public service is there seems to be almost no quality control for work and no accountability for poor performance. We should have the best of the best working in the public service but instead it's become this fiefdom of taxpayer funding jobs programs for certain people and their closest friends and family members only.

Don’t get me started on that. There is some patronage and favoritism in staff hiring though not like it was in the bad old days. But the public sector unions resist any attempt at improving productivity and efficiency and have a death grip on keeping everything the same. I had a provincial DM tell me once that they could fire a management non-union person fairly easily with severance based on service time, but anyone in the union was essentially unfireable unless they were convicted in the courts of some crime related to their job or a more serious offence that required jail time. When restructuring occurs there is no hope of reducing the staff complement and they need to be placed somewhere even if they have no qualifications. It’s just nuts.

But management within the bureaucracy is no better. HRM has no motivation to save money so everyone just gets annual increases regardless of performance and the staff complement just bloats as they establish new functions that are far from vital but demanded by special interests. The management ranks just keep growing and becoming far more expensive as time goes on. There is no motivation to improve things because the money just keeps rolling in. Not even the most complacent private sector firm would act in such a way.

[OliverD]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

It's the speculative nature of it that I simply cannot grasp. It's akin to "unrealized gains" in a sense that if someone your age bought your house for $150k a long while back but now it's assessed at $600k well what good is that for you unless you sell? Suddenly your property taxes start skyrocketing for no other reason because it's not as if the same old home required twice the infrastructure in utilities or whatever but you're being charged extra as if that's so.

However, at the same time anyone who's a new home buyer gets hit immediately with insanely higher rates on the same block because of property taxes evaluations only.

The problem is how we tax things, not that young people or old people should be singled out and punished like some kind of crabs in a bucket. The system needs complete reworking.

In order for property taxes to be equitable – given that all else is equal, the person who has lived in their home for 20 years pays the same taxes that the person next door who has lived there for two years pays – it pretty much has to be based on the home's fair market value.

I don't think this is inherently problematic, although I can understand how it is perceived that way. The assessment value on its own should be largely irrelevant – only the actual tax amount is important, and it's reasonable for that to increase gradually more or less in line with CPI. Generally speaking the tax rate should fluctuate to keep everyone's tax bills stable.

Of course, one could also completely detach property taxes from property values and develop a formula based on other criteria but that would ultimately be a lot more complex.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by ArchAficionado

That being said, the current solution where a family in their 30s who just moved to a neighborhood is paying twice or even more than twice as much property tax as a family who has lived there for 20+ years is at best unfair and at worst actively harming the next generation who is already systemically in dire straits as pertains to home ownership.

Sorry, I must have missed this aspect of the current cap system. So not all homes in a particular area are capped equally? Is this a recent change?

I was under the impression that cap values for a particular area were determined by whatever formula they use and it was applied to all homes in that area. It sounds like you are saying that if a home is sold, that the new owner is taxed at an uncapped value. Is that true?

Obviously I'm not a municipal tax expert, just want to know the truth.