Signal boosting the Inky: The Delinquency Crisis
OK, it's the local broadsheet, it shouldn't need signal-boosting, but this is fucked-up serious business.
The City of Philadelphia is, to put it mildly, not a tax haven. I didn't complain loudly at the time, but I paid way more to the City DOR in taxes last year than I did to the IRS. I didn't complain loudly (I admit to complaining some) because this is not a rich city, and it has a lot of nifty infrastructure that I did kind of move here for, and that costs money. Further, I believe that ponying up your fair share is basic-level citizenship.
Also, too, I live in what can fairly be described as a mediocre neighborhood. Point Breeze is a poor/working class, majority black neighborhood that had its commercial heart cut out many decades ago and hasn't had it replaced with anything. Empty lots and boarded-up houses are endemic. It is slowly being colonized by 20-something (mostly white) professional/creatives marching south out of the rapidly gentrifying Graduate Hospital to our north across Washington Ave. To be perfectly clear, this is a good thing. It is slowly morphing the character of the neighborhood, yes, but thanks to the existing blight conditions it will be years, if not decades, before there is serious supply pressure on the housing market here. In the meantime, actual businesses are starting to set up shop, providing the neighborhood with basic amenities like bars, coffee shops, and restaurants.
My block itself is actually fairly nice, with lots of longstanding residents, families who feel secure enough to let their small children play in the street, and about half-a-dozen houses that have clearly filled in the formerly vacant lots in the last decade or so. Despite our long commutes, I like it here.
Given my personal experience with living here, I am appalled at what I read in the Inquirer's special report on property tax delinquency. Tax delinquency is both a symptom and a contributing cause of the blight in my neighborhood and many others in Philadelphia, and is an obstacle to its solution. What I hadn't realized until Patrick Kerkstra laid it out in stark terms was the scale of the problem: 111,000 properties in this city owe a collective $471.5M in back taxes, interest, and penalties. We think. Those numbers are from a records sweep as of April 30th of this year, and those records are antiquated, disorganized and have severe known problems. Meanwhile, land that developers are salivating over lies fallow, trapped in redundant and sclerotic city bureaucracy. (The block featured in that article begins, according to Google, 524 feet from my front door; the block itself runs for only another 420 feet.)
$471,500,000. That is madness. Absurd. That represents 720,000 property-years of unpaid taxes. This is a city that only two years ago threatened to shutter its library system to close a gaping budget deficit. What the hell is wrong with that picture? I can't even think about that without tilting. What kinds of improvements to the city could that kind of money fund? How about better record-keeping at the Sheriff's Office, so we can know exactly how far in the hole we are to better than two significant figures? Nah, that would probably be a drop in the bucket. How about eliminating taxes on business gross receipts, so we don't chase the high-volume low-margin activity that still employs people in 21st Century America out to the suburbs? (That one particularly stuck in my craw last year.)
The sickest part is that the mechanism for clearing debts to the city, sheriff's auction, works very well, when it works, especially in a rising market like Philadelphia has. The city gets its money, the deadbeat owner extracts the remainder of the value of the property as cash, and new owners can pour money into redevelopment or renovation. The problem is that the backlog now cannot be cleared; even if 1000 properties a month went on the block, every month, for the next nine years, it wouldn't clear the existing scofflaw parcels, and needless to say that the Sheriff's Office is not prepared to handle that volume, nor is there sufficient capital available to absorb these onto the real estate market, even in the current environment.
Even my quiet, solid block isn't immune. Quite the opposite: of the 50 properties that front it, 19 are in arrears. It's a disgrace to the city that that rate is only twice the citywide average. Six of the properties have debts stacked up going back a decade or more.
The curious can view a Google Mapshup of the citywide trainwreck here, courtesy of the Inquirer and PlanPhilly. Be sure to zoom in on any neighborhood you're particularly interested in; even Google will choke and give up before displaying 111K data points.
TL;DR: The property tax collection system in Philadelphia is fucked beyond measure. Possibly literally.
Originally posted at http://ccommack.dreamwidth.org/141231.html, and currently has
comments. You can comment there yourself using OpenID (or bug me for a code).
The City of Philadelphia is, to put it mildly, not a tax haven. I didn't complain loudly at the time, but I paid way more to the City DOR in taxes last year than I did to the IRS. I didn't complain loudly (I admit to complaining some) because this is not a rich city, and it has a lot of nifty infrastructure that I did kind of move here for, and that costs money. Further, I believe that ponying up your fair share is basic-level citizenship.
Also, too, I live in what can fairly be described as a mediocre neighborhood. Point Breeze is a poor/working class, majority black neighborhood that had its commercial heart cut out many decades ago and hasn't had it replaced with anything. Empty lots and boarded-up houses are endemic. It is slowly being colonized by 20-something (mostly white) professional/creatives marching south out of the rapidly gentrifying Graduate Hospital to our north across Washington Ave. To be perfectly clear, this is a good thing. It is slowly morphing the character of the neighborhood, yes, but thanks to the existing blight conditions it will be years, if not decades, before there is serious supply pressure on the housing market here. In the meantime, actual businesses are starting to set up shop, providing the neighborhood with basic amenities like bars, coffee shops, and restaurants.
My block itself is actually fairly nice, with lots of longstanding residents, families who feel secure enough to let their small children play in the street, and about half-a-dozen houses that have clearly filled in the formerly vacant lots in the last decade or so. Despite our long commutes, I like it here.
Given my personal experience with living here, I am appalled at what I read in the Inquirer's special report on property tax delinquency. Tax delinquency is both a symptom and a contributing cause of the blight in my neighborhood and many others in Philadelphia, and is an obstacle to its solution. What I hadn't realized until Patrick Kerkstra laid it out in stark terms was the scale of the problem: 111,000 properties in this city owe a collective $471.5M in back taxes, interest, and penalties. We think. Those numbers are from a records sweep as of April 30th of this year, and those records are antiquated, disorganized and have severe known problems. Meanwhile, land that developers are salivating over lies fallow, trapped in redundant and sclerotic city bureaucracy. (The block featured in that article begins, according to Google, 524 feet from my front door; the block itself runs for only another 420 feet.)
$471,500,000. That is madness. Absurd. That represents 720,000 property-years of unpaid taxes. This is a city that only two years ago threatened to shutter its library system to close a gaping budget deficit. What the hell is wrong with that picture? I can't even think about that without tilting. What kinds of improvements to the city could that kind of money fund? How about better record-keeping at the Sheriff's Office, so we can know exactly how far in the hole we are to better than two significant figures? Nah, that would probably be a drop in the bucket. How about eliminating taxes on business gross receipts, so we don't chase the high-volume low-margin activity that still employs people in 21st Century America out to the suburbs? (That one particularly stuck in my craw last year.)
The sickest part is that the mechanism for clearing debts to the city, sheriff's auction, works very well, when it works, especially in a rising market like Philadelphia has. The city gets its money, the deadbeat owner extracts the remainder of the value of the property as cash, and new owners can pour money into redevelopment or renovation. The problem is that the backlog now cannot be cleared; even if 1000 properties a month went on the block, every month, for the next nine years, it wouldn't clear the existing scofflaw parcels, and needless to say that the Sheriff's Office is not prepared to handle that volume, nor is there sufficient capital available to absorb these onto the real estate market, even in the current environment.
Even my quiet, solid block isn't immune. Quite the opposite: of the 50 properties that front it, 19 are in arrears. It's a disgrace to the city that that rate is only twice the citywide average. Six of the properties have debts stacked up going back a decade or more.
The curious can view a Google Mapshup of the citywide trainwreck here, courtesy of the Inquirer and PlanPhilly. Be sure to zoom in on any neighborhood you're particularly interested in; even Google will choke and give up before displaying 111K data points.
TL;DR: The property tax collection system in Philadelphia is fucked beyond measure. Possibly literally.
Originally posted at http://ccommack.dreamwidth.org/141231.html, and currently has
comments. You can comment there yourself using OpenID (or bug me for a code).