40 years ago this summer, voters in California approved Proposition 13, a law that initiated sweeping changes to the California property tax system and permanently re-shaped the dynamics of property ownership in the state. Prop 13 is known in California and beyond as the rule that protects low-income, elderly property owners from being priced out of their own neighborhoods. It also means that recent home buyers provide an outsized proportion of local taxes, often paying taxes magnitudes higher than their neighbor for almost the exact same house.

These effects are well known. But given the complexity and scale of the issue, it has been hard to visualize how extreme the disparities are—until now. New maps from Urban3’s analysis in the Golden State visualize the effects across three towns from a micro to regional level.

What’s Prop 13?

But first, what exactly is Prop 13?



200 years after Americans declared themselves free from taxation without representation, California was in the midst of its own taxpayer revolt. Creeping inflation and a population influx spurred a wave of populist sentiment centering on the American Dream of property ownership. Retired businessman Howard “Mad as Hell” Jarvis emerged as the leader of the movement, gaining enough popular support to put a referendum on the ballot to dramatically limit property taxes, despite the ensuing budget cuts to education and public services. The ballot initiative passed by a 30-point margin, and Prop 13 became law.

Prop 13 amended California’s constitution to assess property taxes at 1% of a property’s purchase price with increases limited to less than a 2% annually in assessed value. If the property is sold, its value is assessed at sale price. The rule’s reach was later expanded by Propositions 58 and 193 to exclude heirs from reassessment as well. Critically, Prop 13 treats individuals and commercial entities identically.

What’s wrong with Prop 13?

So what's the matter with prop 13? For one, it's easy to exploit. In a commercial real estate transaction, for instance, a building owned by an LLC can avoid reassessment by shifting proportional individual ownership while never technically changing hands. This freezes the tax rates in time, sometimes to pre-1976 levels. In his Revisionist History podcast series, Malcolm Gladwell discovered that, as a result, Los Angeles taxpayers subsidize the LA Country Club by $89.9 million dollars a year.

Another famous example is Disneyland, which pays five cents per square foot of land — eight times less than the average California homeowner. When longtime property owners pay far less than market value, the brunt of property taxation falls squarely on new homeowners and anyone who relocates to or within the state.