Tishman Speyer Surrenders Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper

It is interesting to see who wanted to participate in the increase in land value in New York City through investing in the housing deal which attempted to convert middle-class housing into something more upscale:

Many of the other companies, banks, countries and pension funds — including the government of Singapore, the Church of England, the Manhattan real estate concern SL Green, and Fortress Investment Groups — that invested billions of dollars in the 2006 deal stand to lose their entire stake.

“At the time, it looked like a sound investment,” said Clark McKinley, a spokesman for Calpers, the giant California public employees’ pension fund, which bought a $500 million stake in the property. “When the market tanked, we got caught.”

Calpers, he added, has written off its investment. So has Calsters, a California pension fund that invested $100 million, as has a Florida pension fund that put $250 million into the deal. …

The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, which made a $575 million secondary loan, and invested as much as $200 million in equity, stands to lose all of that.

It isn’t as if the buyers in this deal were going to build new buildings, or add new housing capacity to NYC on this huge (80 acre) piece of land. They hoped to make minor improvements in very well-located older mid-rise buildings, and collect much higher rent from new up-market tenants than they could collect from the existing middle-class tenants they planned to force out.

NYC’s failure to collect any significant share of the rental value of the land in the form of a tax on land value contributed to the perceived opportunities for Singapore, the Church of England, California and Florida public employees and others to reap the benefit from the economic activity of the NY area and the investments made by NY’s taxpayers (whose sales are taxed and whose wages are taxed, even if they only work in NYC) and subsidies given by the federal government (e.g., transportation systems). (Do you see any irony in it being the California and Florida pension funds which sought to collect a windfall on NYC rent, when those two states have provisions which suppress property taxes and thereby create windfalls for their landholders? I refer to Proposition 13 and “Save Our Homes.”)

If NYC wised up, and placed more of its tax burden on its land value, there wouldn’t have been the hope for ongoing windfalls for private investors.

There would, likely, also be a lot more housing available to meet the needs of middle class and other folks, because taxing land value nudges the owners of underused land to reconsider, and put their land to better use. No parking lots where a high-rise could be. No urban gardens where a mid-rise could be. No rubble-strewn lots where townhouses could be. No “taxpayers” where a building that meets current needs could be.

Remember Leona Helmsley’s famous statement? “WE don’t pay taxes. The little people pay taxes.” She wasn’t describing tax evasion; she was describing how we structure ourselves.

If NYC placed more of its taxation on land value, the big real estate operators WOULD be paying their share of the costs of providing the services which make NYC NYC, and there wouldn’t be windfalls for CALPERS, Singapore or the Church of England, or the next generation of Leona Helmsleys. There wouldn’t be land speculation. There would be a more stable and vital economy, in which all of us could prosper.

But obviously, the powers-that-be prefer the status quo – the system which has funneled 71.8% of America’s net worth into the portfolios of 10% of us, leaving 13.5% for the middle class – the second 10% of us – and best wishes! to the other 80%.

And, given last week’s Supreme Court decision on corporations being entitled to free speech, that 71.8% is going to drown out those who see things differently.