The property tax is the City’s basic income source. Homeowners pay it, but landlords don’t; they pass it through to tenants.

The property tax rate is limited by law, but assessed valuation rises and falls with the market. Rising sale prices in your neighborhood mean rising taxes for you.

Falling prices citywide can lead to a fiscal crisis—and 2007 single-family sales in Cambridge are running $125,000 less than last year.

The City assists residential taxpayers by charging a higher rate for commercial property, but this puts the squeeze on small business owners.

What if we abolished the property tax and replaced it with a city income tax? Tax-exempt institutions like Harvard and MIT would no longer enjoy an unfair advantage. Officials and employees, including those who commute, would pay their fair share.

An income tax would also be much cheaper to administer, piggybacking on IRS paperwork. Rent control was the keystone of Cambridge housing policy for 25 years. Four years ago, voters were presented with an innovative rent control proposal designed to resolve problems of fairness in the old rent law. Despite being outspent 100-to-one, 40 percent of Cambridge voters approved Question 1 in 2003.

Councilors Decker and Reeves worked against the 2003 rent control initiative. Of the nine city councilors, only Denise Simmons supported it.

1. Magazine Street shows that unless rents and evictions are regulated, other protections like the state condo conversion law are evaded.
2. Magazine Street shows that condo conversion does not always make everyone homeowners. Government rent subsidies are one answer to affordability. But there are never enough to go around, and they are constantly at risk in a distant federal budget process dominated by corporate lobbyists and military spending.

If an industry’s prices aren’t regulated, large-scale subsidies will push up costs and mostly end up in corporate hands.

The U.S. housing bubble is now bursting. Foreclosures are up in this state and financial experts say a long crisis is only beginning. The speculators have paid too much for 55 Magazine. With maintenance and capital improvements overdue, we do not want to see this building foreclosed and abandoned.