There’s no polite way to say it, but proposition 13 has slowly killed California, gutted our schools, choked out our housing market, and shielded corporations from paying their fair share. But try bringing that up in a room full of California homeowners and you’ll be met with something between a hiss and a heart attack, especially from those in burbs.
Prop 13 has become a sacred cow, sold to us as the measure that saved homeowners from being taxed out of their properties. And while it may have once served a purpose, today it’s a policy zombie, dead logic still roaming the halls of Sacramento, kept alive by nostalgia, fear, and misinformation.
Let’s break the myth: Prop 13 doesn’t protect the working class, it protects those who bought early and big. The system punishes new homeowners and renters, locks in generational inequality, and grants absurd tax breaks to corporations that haven’t had their properties reassessed since the late 1970s [1].
While you’re paying market rate for a one-bedroom in Pomona, Chevron is sitting on commercial land taxed like it’s 1982. Is that fairness? Is that equity? No, it’s a long con dressed up as property rights.
And let’s not forget how Prop 13 gutted funding for public schools and local services. Before 1978, California ranked among the top states for education funding. Now? We’re lucky if schools have working HVAC systems. That isn’t accidental. That’s what happens when you starve local governments for decades and expect them to run on fumes and bake sales [2].
Prop 13 was a political coup wrapped in populist language. It passed with bipartisan support, but its legacy is bipartisan failure. Even Jerry Brown, who was governor when it passed, embraced it after the fact. No one wanted to touch the “third rail” of California politics, even as the damage became obvious.
SO WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?
We stop pretending this policy is sacred. We start telling the truth about who it protects and who it punishes. That means having the courage to:
Close the commercial loopholes. It’s obscene that Disneyland and Chevron are taxed like it’s still 1978 while working families pay full freight. The 2020 attempt (Prop 15) to fix this nearly passed. With better organizing and clearer messaging, it could pass next time [3].
Introduce a progressive reassessment structure. We can protect elderly and low-income homeowners while still updating the assessed value of properties, especially investment homes and land banking schemes that drive up rent and displacement.
Use the additional revenue to reinvest locally. Public schools, housing, transit, and healthcare have all been starved for decades under Prop 13. Restoring local funding would actually make California livable again—not just for the wealthy, but for working people who built this state.
This isn’t about punishing success, it’s about undoing structural protections for inherited wealth and corporate hoarding that are actively destroying access to opportunity for everyone else.
And yes, the governor matters. And yes, so do state policies. But let’s stop blaming every problem in California on whoever’s in office and start calling out the policies that have quietly driven this crisis for decades.
Because while we’re yelling at governors, blaming immigrants, and pointing fingers at social programs, the real culprit has been quietly sitting there for decades, untouched and untouchable.
But maybe it’s not untouchable anymore.
Maybe The Pomonan just touched it.
This is your sacred cow. Consider it tipped.
Julian Lucas, is a photographer, a purveyor of books, and writer, but mostly a photographer. Don’t ever ask him to take photos of weddings or quinceaneras, because he will charge you a ton of money.
