‘Highballed’: how disproportionate property taxes are forcing some Americans to leave their homes

The favorite part of Bonita Anderson to live in Baltimore is to have a family nearby. A family matriarch with five children and eight grandchildren, Anderson worked hard to buy a place in the city for her family to call home in 2009.

“It was an achievement for me,” he said. “That’s where we used to meet to unite the family.”

Last week, what was once Anderson’s precious home appeared for sale at almost $ 540,000, more than five times what he paid for him. But Anderson will not see any of the income.

After more than a decade of making payments for his mortgage of $ 100,000, Anderson was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. In the midst of growing medical invoices and property taxes, Baltimore’s lifetime resident says he had to choose between fighting for his life and fighting for his home.

While receiving treatment, Anderson was delayed in his property taxes at approximately $ 5,000. In 2022, he lost his home in a tax sale in the city of Baltimore.

“I sat and thought: ‘My God, I am 70 years old and I have no home,'” Anderson told ABC News senior political correspondent, Rachel Scott.

The city of Baltimore had put a right of retention on Anderson’s fiscal debt and the auction to the highest bidder, a company that specializes in purchasing of tax taxes, for only $ 69,500.

“If you cannot pay your property taxes and continue to lose your payments, the Government will auction its property for taxes,” said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies of the University of Hofstra.

Judicial records show that Anderson tried to fulfill and redeem his home, paying the city $ 18,900 at the end of 2022, rather than tripling their pending taxes. But instead of putting these payments to its taxes, the city applied money to the taxes that had accumulated under the new owner.

Anderson, without knowing it, paid the investor tax invoices instead of his, allowing the company to execute mortgage execution at his home in 2023.

“I was baffled,” he said.

‘Full of distortions’

Anderson’s house was only one of the almost 44,000 Baltimore properties that were in municipal tax sales from 2019 to 2023. It was also among 92% of those properties located in non -white majority neighborhoods, which represent 70% of the plots throughout the city.

An analysis of the data of the Attom Census Office and the United States of television stations owned by ABC showed a probable reason for this disparity: disproportionate property taxes.

Property taxes are based on a government evaluation of the value of each home. But researchers say that the values of the properties are highly subjective, and these estimates are not always aligned with market prices.

The data show that discrepancies in evaluations, and therefore, tax invoices affect some communities rather than others.

ABC’s analysis found that throughout the country, house owners in predominantly black and brown areas tend to pay higher taxes than those of mainly white neighborhoods for a house that is worth the same amount in the open market.

“When property tax systems are full of distortions, punished people tend to be the poorest owners,” Levy said. “In the suburbs, where you have a high level of segregation, the people who are being unjustly taxed depending on not accurately capturing the value of the home are people of color.”

For some of these owners of housing that are “high” in their evaluations, the lost invoices lead to the sale of taxes, leaving them with nothing. From the moment Anderson bought his house until he lost it, the evaluation of the property tripled, but the booming value of the house was finally for its new owner.

“I don’t know what is worse, lose the house or be diagnosed with cancer,” Anderson said. “It still hurts.”

Until recently, Levy said, fiscal sales more frequently took place in cities. As the urban neighborhoods got off and the values of the properties changed rapidly, the residents of a lifetime could not always keep up with the growing invoices.

“Now we are beginning to see more of that in suburban areas, particularly in the poorest suburban areas as we are seeing a demographic change,” Levy said.

In Garden City, a predominantly white suburb in Long Island in New York with an average housing value of around $ 1 million, a typical residential tax bill is around $ 10,000 to $ 15,000, as shown by the property data.

In the future in Hempstead, where 88% of residents are black or Latin, houses tend to be worth less than half. But the typical tax invoice is similar, which means that Hempstead owners pay more in taxes in relation to the value of their homes.

John Rao, a senior lawyer of the National Consumer Law Center, says that US housing owners in color communities face a “double blow.” They often receive “Low” evaluations When trying to buy or refinance their homes, Rao explained: “But when it comes to paying their taxes, once they have owned the house … often their evaluations are proportionally higher than they should be.”

‘Strip generational wealth’

In the county of the Delaware suburbs, Pennsylvania, Galoria Gaynor, 91, who suffers from dementia, lost his 25-year-old home due to $ 3,500 in taxes he did not pay during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Gaynor’s daughter, Jackie Davis, He told ABC WPVI-TV station that his mother stayed at home during the pandemic. His annual trip to the tax office was skipped after hearing that the tax collectors had stopped the application of the law when COVID-19 extended through the Philadelphia suburbs.

When the government restarted the collection efforts and the County Tax Office reopened, Gaynor entered and made a payment, with the intention of covering the taxes of the previous year, according to his lawyer, Alexander Barth.

On the other hand, the money was applied to taxes 2021 and 2022 of Gaynor and not its pending balance of 2020, “leaving what is essentially a donut in its history of tax payments,” Barth explained.

A real estate investor bought Gaynor’s house from Delaware County for $ 14,000, the cost of their backward taxes plus interest and rates.

Gaynor had paid most of his mortgage in the house, which is now worth approximately $ 247,000. But she did not make money from the sale.

“This is stripping the generational wealth of those who have those who do not have and allowing them to have it,” Barth said.

Gaynor’s family went to court in an attempt to return home, but two courts confirmed the sale.

The Delaware County Tax Clarification Office told the ABC Philadelphia station that although “sympathizes with emotional tolls” in Gaynor, the County government acted within the Pennsylvania Law and issued multiple notices before sale.

If Gaynor had lived just a few miles away within the limits of the city of Philadelphia, officials there would have taken additional measures to try to keep it at home.

Since property taxes are handled differently in different communities, some local governments such as Philadelphia have protection layers for vulnerable owners, such as requiring notifications in person before a tax sale or offering payment plans to exchange a house later.

“Although local governments must do everything possible to keep people in their homes, be it an owner or a tenant, at some point they have an obligation with all other taxpayers, companies, families who pay their fair part to make sure these taxes are collected,” said Levy.

From the living room to the courtroom

A little more than 90 miles along the way from Gaynor, Anderson spends his days looking back in the memories he built in the house that once was the central piece of his family.

Now living with his daughter in a suburb of Baltimore, Anderson has taken his case to the courts, joining a lawsuit claiming that the city of Baltimore violated the federal law by selling its old house to a private company for cent in the dollar.

The city of Baltimore, which did not respond to the requests for comments from ABC News, has defended its actions in the Court, saying that it notified Anderson as required and did not benefit from the sale.

In 2023, the United States Supreme Court ruled that local governments could not benefit from tax sales, finding that owners have a constitutional right to any payment beyond the taxes and sanctions that must.

In the last two years, many states throughout the country have changed their laws in the light of the Court’s decision. But some experts say that the federal government also has a role to play.

“The federal response to reduce local property taxes is more funds for local services,” said Levy. “They need more help from Congress and the White House.”

As the Trump administration has reduced the federal budget, local governments will have to compensate for the difference to provide the same services.

According to experts, municipalities will probably depend more on property taxes, which in turn could mean more situations such as Anderson’s, where housing owners in non -white majority neighborhoods too often pay more than their fair part.

When Abc News asked him what happened to his dream of transmitting his house to his family’s next generation, Anderson said: “He died.”

“It still excites me,” Anderson said. “It’s difficult. Very hard.”

Meghan Mistry, John Santucci and Lucien Bruggeman of ABC News, along with Ryann Jones, Maggie Green, Jason Knowles, Cheryl Mettendorf, Chad Pradelli, Dan Krauth, David Paredes, Ross Weidner and Sarah Rafique, Cheryl Mettendorf, Dan Krauth, Dan Krauth, Paredes, Ross Weidner and Sarah Rafique contributed to ABC television stations.