The Problem of Progressive Cities and the Property Tax

The news circulated last week that a couple had purchased one of the most exclusive streets in San Francisco through a delinquent property tax sale. Capitalizing on a routine if little understood aspect of municipal governance—city government’s sales of property to recoup their unpaid taxes—the couple nabbed the street right from under its tony residents’ Tesla tires. Readers chuckled that Presidio Terrace’s residents might soon be forced to either buy the street at a considerable mark-up or pay an exorbitant rent to park their cars in their regular spots.

But the kind of delinquent tax sale that, in this case many read about with gleeful schadenfreude, is a grim fact of life for many city dwellers, often those least able to carry the burden.