(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

To the editor:

Regarding the proposed real estate transfer tax, a few points need to be made.

1. A transfer tax is a sales tax, and sales taxes are regressive by nature and disproportionately burden those who can afford it least.

1. The transfer tax will not significantly slow the firestorm of luxury condo development in Somerville. Luxury condo developers more than anyone can afford to pay the one or two percent.
2. The argument that long-term residents shouldn’t complain about the transfer tax because they’ve gotten rich doing nothing is specious; see below.
3. The transfer tax is being rushed through, without sufficient opportunity for due process. A change of this magnitude should be voted on by all residents as a ballot initiative.
4. The proposal sets forth detailed plans to extract more money from residents, but is notably uninformative about how exactly the money will be spent.
5. The proposed tax discriminates against the elderly, as others have rightly pointed out.

Regarding the specious argument that long-term residents shouldn’t complain about the transfer tax because they’ve gotten rich doing nothing:

The value of a house is a wash, unless its owner is willing to relocate to a place where houses are cheaper. Places with bargain property values generally have lower density, worse unemployment, more social problems and less services. This simple fact is what’s been driving the affluent out of suburbs and into urban cores. While long-term residents stay in Somerville, they make nothing; on the contrary they become poorer, because the cost of living here continues to increase rapidly, whereas inflation-adjusted middle class incomes have been flat or declining for decades. Long-term residents face an ugly dilemma: sell and be displaced to marginal areas with lower quality of life, or stay and risk being bankrupted by ever-increasing costs. People who grew up here can hardly recognize their hometown. None of them asked to live amid rabbit warrens of luxury condos and have the globetrotting elite as neighbors. They feel betrayed by city officials and understandably so.

Somerville officials love to paint themselves as helpless victims of market forces, but the truth is that they never met a luxury condo they didn’t like. Somerville has been aggressively courting luxury condos for decades, and for the usual venal reason: they’re easy to build quickly and generate huge short-term profits for developers and well-connected real estate lawyers, who in turn kick money back to the mayor and his cronies, thereby keeping the administration in power and ensuring more of the same. The mayor and the planning board claim to fight for affordable housing while they simultaneously do everything within their power to ensure that luxury condo towers are permitted and built at breakneck speed. It’s a sham and we don’t need to speculate about what its outcome will be; we only need to look at the exclusivity of cities further down the road of plutocratization, such as Brooklyn, San Francisco, London, and Paris.

Chris Korda
Somerville