D&D and the rising pandemic
Istbor
Dances with Gnolls
My mother asked me if I was coming down to Texas this year to see them. That would be likely in Jan or Feb. I had to tell her that so far out it is impossible to tell what the fall and winter will be like and whether I would be willing to travel and have to take so much time off work, not only for the stay there, but the screening time after getting back, before I can actually go in to work.
Both parents are vaccinated, and are 'Winter birds', though I am honestly still pretty concerned with them wanting to head down into the possible fire zone that Texas could be in the fall/winter.
Both parents are vaccinated, and are 'Winter birds', though I am honestly still pretty concerned with them wanting to head down into the possible fire zone that Texas could be in the fall/winter.
Ryujin
Legend
When we moved where I now live, 50 years ago, you could get a semi-detached house for $15,000 and a detached for maybe $25,000. No, those aren't typos
Now this city might as well be part of Toronto and the same detached, single story homes are going for upwards of $800K.
FitzTheRuke
Legend
My grandmother still lives in a house that she paid $4000 (interest free!) for in 1948. It would be about $2.8 million now, if I am up on that neighborhood.When we moved where I now live, 50 years ago, you could get a semi-detached house for $15,000 and a detached for maybe $25,000. No, those aren't typos
Ryujin
Legend
Real estate: 'Cause they ain't making any more of it
Well, part of the issue is that, broadly speaking, if you step on the rake, someone else gets hit with it.
The nation's population is 328 million or so. There have been 2.5 million people hospitalized with covid. That's about 1 in 160 people. So, the chances that someone you're really close to has been in the hospital for this aren't great. It is all at a distance, and so for many people it hasn't seemed very real.
Navigating the fun of last minute on-line charter school sign up after the rise of delta and failure of adjustment at our state level make it too uncomfortable to send our student to the neighborhood school for the month and a half before he's fully vaxxed. Here's hoping the universe at large settles down for him to come back after either a quarter or semester.
GreyLord
Legend
Yes, this is the type of thing that really burns me. There should be laws that they can never make you pay more in property tax than what your mortgage payments were....ever.
IT's terrible for those on retirement incomes and fixed incomes. You buy a home hoping to have it into your senior years, and then you end up paying more on a fixed income in property taxes than you were paying on it's mortgage when you were working.
FitzTheRuke
Legend
It's Free Comic Book Day this Saturday, so we're faced with the prospect of a busy comic store. The best I can think of is to only allow 10-15 people in the 2000 sq ft store at a time (masks required). Any other ideas on controlling traffic? (A few local stores have opted to skip it).
I'm all for keeping folks in their houses in their senior years - or to stop families from being removed at younger ages due to gentrification, or to stop ancestral land from being lost because of increasing value!
Unfortunately, I think, a lot of the plans I hear around here for doing that seem more like they're designed to help folks who just don't want to pay taxes but still want to reap all the profits when they sell. So, I wonder about doing something like giving people a choice on how they want the tax changes to be done - either (a) as usual (regular reappraisals with a % increase limit), or (b) deferred to something like the next time the house is sold to someone outside the family. So, if the senior wants the house to be sold when they die to give their kids a huge amount of money (either they or the kids selling), then they should pay the increased taxes on it as they go. If they don't care if it's passed on, then they don't ever have them increase, and maybe the house goes to the city to be sold to recoup those taxes when they pass away. That avoids the things where if you just have the older generation get a fixed tax rate forever, then the younger generations and those who had to move for some reason pay for all of the public services. (In a place where property taxes do that, anyway).
