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This Moment In Gentrification: Wheel Of Fortune!

City Hall just opened a full can of worms when it introduced this week an add-on to the ongoing AVI property tax evaluation rehab project. Billed as a sort of innoculation against massive property tax hikes due to gentrification, a new provision would protect some whose houses jumped wildly in value, while leaving others (whose homes did not, say, triple in value but might have come close) with massive new bills. CP’s Isaiah Thompson explains this better than we ever could, and leaves everybody wondering: Is this actually progress?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2012 at 9:38 am.

  • Mike

    The problem is that PAs constitution doesn’t let you tax differently based on income.  That is why our income tax is flat.  So you can’t give a property tax break to people based on income, so I guess length of ownership is the best way they could come up with to get around that and help some old ladies with their tax bill.  

  • rk

    It’s also not like those Rittenhouse owners aren’t going to see a tripling of their bill. Imagine having a house valued at 200k now valued at 1 million in Rittenhouse–can you necessarily afford 5x the taxes in one sudden increase? and this is only on owner-occupied dwellings, so how many of those are there in rittenhouse that might apply? 

    also, once the title ins transferred, the full AVI would be assessed. this seems like fear-mongering without some attempt to give actual examples–how many 10+ year residents are there in Rittenhouse? According to easily findable census data, only about 20-30% of housing units in the area are owner occupied. Of those, a quick look at other ACS data show that less than 15% of all residents in rittenhouse and fitler square are living in owner occupied units for over 10 years as of 2010.  now, let’s assume that 50% of the assessments more than triple and 50% don’t reach triple (not unreasonable, but definitely an assumption). we’re now talking about 7.5 or 8% of rittenhouse residents receiving any sort of break. dig into it, and it looks like, on a 15 minute glance, there’s not much there there.

    naked city did a better job with the problems involved with the VI + U&O taxes on small businesses.