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Hector Marin’s June 10 piece, “Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley’s tax doesn’t put community first,” is misleading in many ways, but most puzzling to me is his description of the Workforce Housing Affordability Act as a “regressive tax.”
As is widely known, a regressive tax places higher tax burdens on those with fewer assets and lower incomes. Under the act’s provisions, seniors and low-income home owners will be exempt from the $8-per-month parcel tax. Renters — the great majority of lower-income residents — pay nothing. The real estate transfer tax is applied only to homes that sell for over $1.8 million, with no tax for transfers within a family.
I cannot comprehend how any part of this act could be termed “regressive.”
We have plenty of regressive taxes — sales taxes and tariffs for example — and we should do more to make sales and excise taxes more equitable. The Workforce Housing Affordability Act, on the other hand, would be one of the most progressive taxes on the books in our city. It won’t solve our housing affordability problem, but it will be an important step in the right direction, and will help many more of those in need of housing than the realtors’ alternative measure.
It is a tax that all progressive people in our city should support.
Christopher Connery
Santa Cruz