Written by Josh Ishimatsu, Deputy Director of Strategy
Not that we need anything more to worry about these days, but there’s a troubling initiative on the horizon. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is circulating a petition to put a measure on the November 2026 ballot that will severely limit our ability to raise local funding for affordable housing (along with all other local, public funding measures). It’s called the “Local Taxpayer Protection Act to Save Prop 13.” This is a retread of a proposed initiative that was slated for the November 2024 ballot, but was declared unconstitutional by the CA Supreme Court. The Jarvis people say that they’ve fixed the unconstitutional parts and are trying again to place it on the ballot, again.
I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but I don’t believe that Prop 13 needs to be fixed in the ways that the Jarvis Association is proposing. Because of Prop 13 and its progeny, our public sector is underfunded and handcuffed. It’s a big reason why our state’s politics and especially public spending seem so fractured and ad hoc. Among other things, Prop 13 requires that new local taxes need to be put on the ballot and approved by over 2/3s of local voters in an election. Having a one-third-plus-one-vote minority be able to veto any new tax or revenue raising proposal is undemocratic and hamstrings the ability of the public sector to get anything done – to plan and prioritize, let alone get resources to the places that need them. In these divided times, you’d probably have trouble getting two-thirds of the voting public to agree that water is wet. And, even if we had more normal times, our ballots have become too crowded and confusing with Prop 13 requiring that we have to vote on so many bond measures and water districts and sales taxes and whatnot.
At any rate, the proposed Jarvis ballot initiative would specifically hurt our local affordable housing funding in at least two principal ways.
The first is that it specifically targets real estate transfer taxes and would repeal any existing real estate transfer tax that is above 0.11%. This includes the City of San Jose’s Measure E. This would mean the loss of tens of millions of dollars annually that goes towards affordable housing (though not so much as of right now), shelter and services for the unhoused, and homelessness prevention programs.
The second is that it would take away our ability to pass citizens’ initiatives at 50%+1. Because Prop 13 and its progeny only applies to government initiated taxes, citizens’ initiated special taxes don’t have the same 2/3 threshold. We at the SV@Home Action Fund are talking to other local nonprofit organizations about the possibility of putting a citizens’ initiative for affordable housing funding on the ballot (likely would be in 2028). This would hurt our or any other future grassroots efforts to propose new funding outside of the traditional government pathways.
The bottom line is that if someone harasses you outside of Safeway to sign a petition to get the “Local Taxpayer Protection Act” on the CA November 2026 ballot, please politely tell them NO. Signature gatherers are people too, so it’s not good form to be rude. But there’s no reason that this mess should be on our ballots.