Okay disclaimer: I believe having to pay any kind of tax on your primary residence is messed up, so I'm more than a little biased here.

As far as I've been able to find on Google, retirement in California runs up to about 1 million a decade. With a generous estimate of 20 years remaining for both of them, you're looking at 1.75 mil for buying a home, moving, assorted emergencies, end of life care, inheritance before you factor in anything they might actually want to do with their remaining lifetimes. That's... not really a lot. I mean hell, the median home in San Francisco is 1.5 mil. It's certainly possible to cut costs here and there to make it work (particularly by choosing a house on the cheaper side) without having a below-average retirement, but at this point we're talking about retired people wanting a good location and quality of life and maybe some financial freedom for their retirement, not evil rich people hoarding money. What I'm trying to say here is that working class people (indeed, everyone) should be allowed to want this stuff, and not denied it because the government would rather take their money than tax the filthy rich. I'm speculating here, but I doubt any of this is radically different from what would be considered normal, maybe on the better side, 50 years ago. Capitalism has managed to convince people that they're not entitled to this stuff, but they are. You, me, the couple in the article, we're all entitled to a good retirement with financial freedom; just because not all of us get to have it doesn't change that fact.