Well all homeowners who voted for Prop 13 effectively were voting against future homeowners, but this doesn't represent all homeowners. Some are still likely anti-density and limiting new housing but not all.
Most of the people who voted for Proposition 13 were voting against government waste, and against Grandma being forced out of her home of 30 years due to increasing property taxes.
The unintended consequences didn't become apparent until much later.
I recently moved to California and was born after all this started but I'm pretty interested in the early days. Was it honestly believed that this was the best way as a way for grandma to keep her house in days of high inflation and people didn't realize the potential consequences or was it simply sold to the masses under this guise but really it was to benefit existing landowners, creating basically a landowning aristocracy.
There just seem to be so many better ways for fixed income people to keep their homes, like a tax rebate for seniors below a certain income... Although I disagree it is strictly necessary for grandma to keep her home, retires who can't afford their taxes could reasonably be expected to downsize once kids leave home or even god forbid cohabitate with their children as is very common in the rest of the world.
I don't know if people thought Proposition 13 was the best solution but the state legislature hadn't done anything to solve the problem and no one else did the hard work necessary to get an alternative on the ballot. So voters in 1978 had to choose between Proposition 13 or nothing.
How so? Prop 13 protects home owners from eviction due to tax increases, but encourages new zoning and new development since property taxes get rebaselined to market on every sale. Also, despite the high costs, the housing market is still pretty liquid with people paying millions for a shot at home ownership, even though that comes with $15-45K in property taxes each year.
It discourages people from downsizing as empty nesters. It discourages landlords from remodeling/improving their property. It allows long time landowners to sit on underutilized properties for a long time, as they wait for prices to go up even higher, instead of nudging them to redevelop sooner.
The housing market has few properties on the market, which is part of a why prices are so high.
