u/Revature12

This past Sunday (May 3rd) I was sitting in the Port Washington Laundromat washing some clothes before church and watching the TV hanging in the laundromat.

I don't live in the area and am not familiar with the local channels, but I think it was "Channel 7 eyewitness news" shortly before 8am.

Anyway, there was a short little human interest story about the Blessing of the Bikes, and I was shocked by the thinly veiled hostility radiating off the male news anchor. The female news anchor was the one presenting the story and kept it professional, but everything the male said during the segment was mocking and sarcastic.

Here were a group of cyclists wheeling a white ghost bike down the aisle of the cathedral. Anybody who knows anything about bikes knows that this is a sad and meaningful moment, commemorating those have died while out riding.

The male anchor first joked sarcastically about the cyclists walking in the church with their helmets on. And then a paragraph or so later, he made basically the same sarcastic joke about some of them wearing sunglasses indoors as well. That's it! That was the extent of his contribution. And again, I very much got the impression that he was being as rude and hostile as he thought he could get away within the professional confines of his job.

Everything else in their little morning show was chipper and positive like morning shows usually are. So it was very weird and off-putting, and revealing of the very significant current of anti-bike carbrainedness that permeates our society. Not cool.

I spent this past weekend in a small town in Nassau County, NY, where I spent a few years of my childhood.

While there, the topic of taxes came up, and it became apparent to me that, unlike California or my current state of South Carolina, New York State does not insulate the long-term homeowners against the consequences of their NIMBYism.

California has Prop 13 and SC has Act 388. Both of them force newcomers to pay taxes on the real/recent sale price of homes, whereas old-timers are locked way down at itty bitty rates that are legally prevented from rising as fast as the house price does. The California and SC systems clearly disincentivize the construction of new housing, since neither housing price or tax assessments really impact the guy who's owned his house for 30 years.

In NY state, everyone gets equally brutalized. The long-time resident and the newcomer are both paying approximately what their houses are worth. I talked to a lady at church who was paying something like $20k per year in property taxes.

In theory, this should incentivize people not to be quite so incredibly NIMBY (since an increase in housing supply leading to a fall in housing costs would also lead to a decrease in their own property taxes), but it hasn't. NY is an incredibly difficult place to build (at least in the area I'm talking about: wealthy NYC suburbs).

Anyway, it's kind of a paradox. I guess it just shows that NIMBYs actually are willing to suffer to keep the places they live unaffordable and exclusive. Or maybe it just shows that the level of wealth in these areas is so extreme that the homeowners (though they love to complain) aren't actually as bothered by high taxes as they claim.