Title
Authorizing Council's Committee on Legislative Oversight to hold hearings examining the Office of Property Assessment's assessment system and the impact of increasing real estate taxes on Philadelphia households.
Body
WHEREAS, Philadelphia's Office of Property Assessment has recently announced its assessments for tax year 2019, with many homeowners seeing their first major reassessment since the Actual Value Initiative, which began in tax year 2014 and was aimed at more closely linking property assessments to a property's market value; and
WHEREAS, A Philadelphia Inquirer analysis of the City's assessments for tax year 2019 found that office buildings saw assessment increases of 7.5 percent, on average. Commercial properties, which had been the focus of reassessments in tax year 2018, saw "hardly any change" in the most recent assessments. Meanwhile, residential properties increased, on average, by more than 11 percent in OPA's most recent assessments; and
WHEREAS, The impact of a major reassessment, after several years of fairly consistent assessments in tax years 2015-2018, will be felt particularly hard in gentrifying neighborhoods, where longtime homeowners are already struggling to stay in their homes. According to data compiled by economist Kevin Gillen of the Lindy Land Institute, rapidly developing Point Breeze saw a 43 percent increase in assessments for tax year 2019. These spikes in value outpace even the burgeoning real estate markets for these zip codes: according to Gillen's data, 19145 and 19146 saw home value increases of 20.6 and 24.4 percent, respectively. Homeowners in Brewerytown and Strawberry Mansion are facing a similar spike, as assessments in those areas increased by over 47 percent, on average; and
WHEREAS, The Philadelphia Inquirer's analysis of OPA data found that there are wide discrepancies in underlying land value and in the total assessed value for similar properties, even when those properties are located on ...
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