Comments

1
The average price homes sell for has nothing to do with the assessed value that determines taxes. I own an "average" house that I think I could easily sell for $400,000, but I only pay taxes on a house valued at $120,000. So my tax burden for the bond would be $50 a year, not $169.
2
You're right, and thanks for pointing out my oversight. I've made a note.
3
"So for a $200,000 home, that's $84 bucks a year."

This is an incorrect statement. The correct statement is "a person who owns a property with improvements assessed at $200,000 will owe an additional $84 a year in property taxes".

There are lots and lots of homes with values of over $300,000 in Portland that have assessed values of much less than $200,000. Most of these homes are in gentrified areas where lower income people have been priced out, and costs for transportation are lower because you can walk or bike to jobs and services. Meanwhile, the lower income people that can scrape together enough to buy a home get to purchase a $200,000 home that has an assessed value of ~$190,000 - in a part of town where their transportation costs will also likely be much higher because they have to drive or travel much longer distances on transit to get to anything.

4
Doing more of the same is not going to "burst the bubble". For supply-demand to actually drop prices once they've risen you have to have a surplus, but developers don't build what their analysis say won't be filled, and neither do government officials allocate funds to housing beyond simply meeting the point of equilibrium between supply/ demand. I'm no economist, but I know if it were so simple as everyone I talk to who read the WW's front page article a few months ago seems to think, then it would have worked for other large towns - which it plainly did not.

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