OUR STORIES

Sheri Duffy voted for Prop 19 and now regrets it. Sheri believed Prop 19 would protect her from property reassessment and tax increases.  It didn't!

Sheri lived in her parents' home and cared for them until they died. She and her brother inherited the family home and still live there.  However, because of Prop 19, the home is reassessed and the taxes are unaffordable! Prop 19 did not protect her like it was advertised.

Last parent dies. Due to long delays, disabled senior citizen on SSI in SF, received 4 tax bills totaling $65,000 due in a matter of months. Rough estimate, in 3 years maybe $100,000 will be paid in taxes. If they run out of funds, then they may sell? How do they get an apartment if they don't qualify because they have no salary? In order to be put on low income housing they will have to lose all their assets? Or they could stay in the home and reverse mortgage?

I grew up in Los Altos Hills and have lived here for 26 years now. My childhood memories and my roots are firmly planted in my hometown.

When I was 12, I was hospitalized at a local hospital and ever since have wanted to be a nurse. I was inspired by the care and kindness of those that took care of me. I remember the exact moment when I was a patient that I knew I wanted to one day be able to take care of others the same way. I pursued that goal and am now an oncology nurse.

Not everyone inheriting a home is rich and money is not everyone’s driving factor. Some just want to be able to keep their home so that they can live in it. What matters to me, like many others, is my family, connections, memories, and my community. Those negatively affected by this are teachers, nurses, first responders, social workers, and virtually any and everyone in a service profession whose salary is not on par with that of a tech executive. If the goal is to further gentrify this area and kick out anyone born and brought up here who is not rich, Prop 19 is a wonderful idea and it’s sadly working already.

Signed,
California native 

Share "Nora's Story," by copying and pasting this link: How Nora and the community are affected by Prop 19.

My dad’s grandparents came to the bay area during the gold rush.

My parents purchased a modest Menlo Park ranch home in 1954, in which I grew up. They worked, paid taxes, volunteered with the schools, girl scouts, California Alpine Club, the senior center and much more.

My 94-year-old mother passed away in June of 2021 and she left the family home to me. This was four months after Prop 19 went into effect.

She hadn’t lived in her home for 6 years. She was frail and in need of daily help, so she and her grandson (my son) had traded places when he came home after college. He moved into my mom’s house and she moved in with my husband and me so I could care for her. At the time, under prop 58, it wasn’t necessary for my mom to keep the home as a primary residence in order to qualify for the parent to child reassessment exclusion. The home would qualify for the exclusion as a second property.

However, after paying attention to and following the tax rules, the rules suddenly changed.

Because of prop 19’s passage, the home was reassessed after my mother’s death. The San Mateo County property taxes went from $3,249 to $37,472 or 1,152% One thousand one hundred and fifty two percent!

The similarly aged owner of the home next door had passed not long before my mom, but luckily for her family, she died prior to Prop 19 passage. That home was not reassessed. It remains a rental.

My mom was the last of the original owners on the street to pass away. The developer who tore down those other houses and rebuilt would be happy to take this house off my hands. He had told the assessor that. The realtors who handled the sale would be happy too; it was the California Association of Realtors that proposed and paid for the prop 19 initiative. The replacement spec homes are big and expensive, all single family owner occupied homes. Not for middle

class workers and renters 

I don’t want to sell. This home and the peninsula mean a lot to me. My son and his wife, a local teacher, and their 3-month-old daughter live there. Our granddaughter will be able to walk to the nearby elementary school like I did. Also, prior to my mom’s passing, we made a “granny unit” or ADU out of one part of the house. A veterinary technician and

her dogs live in the ADU. I’m charging under market rent, but I have to raise it annually because of the property taxes. If the time comes when I need help in my final years, I may need to live there next to my son’s family.

Finally, I’m angry about the way Prop 19 was presented to the voters. The title was deceptive, the details confusing. It was thrust upon us at the last minute during a horrific firestorm during the covid epidemic. Those of us that were caring for our dying parents didn’t have time to deal with it. Many didn’t understand what they had voted for. The changes went into effect in just three months. To me, it was a firestorm on top of a firestorm thrown at grieving families.

 As some of you may know, our mom died 2 weeks too late (on the 28th of February 2021) and our house has been subject to reassessment. Although we haven’t yet received the actual new property tax bill, it will be a huge number. We’re all a bit still in a state of shock but as the new reality wears In, we are debating what way forward. My brother and I wish to hold onto the house but one brother is agitating for us to sell. I for one have argued that keeping the property is for now the best hedge against inflation. 

I can’t overstate the extent to how prop 19 has rocked our world. We simply never imagined that something like this could happen and yet here we are. The promise we made to our mom to never sell the family home is in the end, a promise we may not be able to keep; we’ll see. 

In the meantime, I wish to remain in the fight.  One of the issues that has bothered me intensely is how my every effort to engage with the Orange County Tax Payers Association fell flat.  I sent them emails, numerous voice messages, and on the recommendation of Scott At HJTA, I went to their office in the City of Orange. No one was there so I left a hand written message stating that I wished to help with the repeal effort or wanted their help:  Nothing!  Throughout the entire effort I was desperate to either establish or join a network that could help get the word out and get people to help gather signatures. My mentioning this here should be seen less as a complaint and more as an observation of a major hole in our effort to get our repeal proposition on the ballot. 

Perhaps the biggest irony is that Orange County was certainly rich in potential signatures. We just needed a vehicle to first get the word out and second, get the signatures rolling in. I felt (and continue to feel) that it made no sense to create new networks from scratch when there were networks in existence with names, numbers, and addresses that could have been so easily tapped into. I’m bringing this up here in part because we can all start now looking into organizations like the OC tax Payers Association and see if they’re even worth trying to enlist. Let’s face it, prop 19 is the most dramatic and consequential tax increases in at least a generation here in California. Asides from the fundamental unfair way it was passed and the direct effect it will have on folks like my brothers and me, it will, as the attached article points out, force a lot more Californians to leave and squeeze out  the remains of the middle class.  That will change the very nature of the state, and not for the better. 

As to the fate of our family home, we’ll see what happens. I am also motivated by my own home and my children. If they decide to sell our home once we’re no longer, I hope it is because they wish to sell and not because they have to sell just to avoid paying a massive tax bill. 

I’ll apologize here for what may have come off as a rant but I’m thinking that it’s falling on sympathetic ears.