By Guest Columnist, Michael Ceremello- October 4, 2018 –

I am interested in Proposition 10 which allows local jurisdictions to do rent control on houses as well as expanding their ability to enact rent control in the first place.

Rent control doesn’t work and it is a feeble attempt to create low cost housing by limiting the ability of property owners to raise rents in inflationary economic environments.  What happens when you control rent is you remove the incentive of property owners to maintain their property in top condition or to add to amenities to draw renters in.

Proposition 1 and 2 are extensions of government interference in the housing market designed specifically for low income housing and to assist veterans to purchase “farms, homes, and mobile homes”.  Billions of dollars is the figure.  My father was a veteran of World War 2 and he bought a home by having a job.  Seems to me his father immigrated from Italy around the turn of the 19^th Century and no one “assisted” him either.  We have become a Nation reliant on the government and are all victims.

We have yet another $8 billion bond measure, Proposition 3, to provide “safe drinking water”.  The State already has bond money to build new dams, infrastructure as they call it, and they have been sitting on it.  Why would you give them more and accept more debt.

I really don’t care about daylight savings time and Proposition 7.  Giving the Legislature the ability to do anything, including eliminating it, gives more power to those who have proven they can’t use it properly.  This is really a big who cares?

Other than Proposition 6, the gas tax repeal, about the only other proposition I would vote for is Proposition 5 which gives a property tax break to seniors or the disabled by allowing them to change the existing tax basis to another property of equal or less value.  It seems to me this only has marginal value as your current home must have been occupied for a number of years.

My usual message is don’t vote for bonds and repeal any tax you can.  Read the propositions carefully because they are rarely identified correctly by the short descriptions.