Speaker 1: For most of my family members. Holding onto our land
Speaker 1: in Gilmour, Texas was simply more trouble than it was worth.
Speaker 1: What started with eighty acres of potential farmland or property
Speaker 1: to extract resources from, turned into a liability over time,
Speaker 1: Why taxes. My name is plus Maurice Montgomery, the third.
Speaker 1: You might remember Plas from episode one. He's a computer
Speaker 1: technician by trade and lives in Dallas. He came into
Speaker 1: about two acres in much the same way my dad did.
Speaker 1: It was passed down to him from my great great
Speaker 1: aunt and uncle. The Broodics Pleas, more than any relative
Speaker 1: I spoke to, has tried to make something of our
Speaker 1: family's land. He leased the trees on it to a
Speaker 1: timber company, he sold oil rights. He even toyed with
Speaker 1: the idea of turning it into a farm. But as
Speaker 1: time went by, he decided to give up on the land. Basically,
Speaker 1: what I decided to do, or what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: was to simply sell the land so that it was
Speaker 1: no longer a liability on me or my family. The
Speaker 1: problem was his tax bills kept going up. When I
Speaker 1: first started following this, I'd get tax statements every year
Speaker 1: from ups your county. The the whole thing would come
Speaker 1: out to maybe undred two thousand dollars, okay, two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year, yes, And then suddenly the tax statements
Speaker 1: I would get they started to increase exponentially. The last
Speaker 1: statement I remember was right around and when when when
Speaker 1: this this this increase took place. It went up to
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars, and then I noticed so I increases
Speaker 1: over the next few years. And then in two thousand
Speaker 1: five or so, the statement I got indicated almost a
Speaker 1: twenty dollar tax liability and it continued to rise from
Speaker 1: there over the years. Plus its tax liability gained as
Speaker 1: he fell behind on payments. It's also made it hard
Speaker 1: for him to find a buyer who would take on
Speaker 1: those unpaid taxes. In a wide ranging interview, the mayor
Speaker 1: of Gilmour, Tim Marshall described the essential role of property
Speaker 1: taxes and funding local projects. I think what people are
Speaker 1: expecting are they're expecting their infrastructure to be maintained, and
Speaker 1: people don't understand. Sometimes it's the infrastructure, even though a
Speaker 1: little small town like this is the sewer, water, streets
Speaker 1: in different things like that, the police department, the fire department.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of inner workings within the city, and
Speaker 1: the value of your land typically most people around, has
Speaker 1: gone down a little bit. So by raising your taxes
Speaker 1: a little bit the right we generate the same amount
Speaker 1: of money. No one disputes the need of a county
Speaker 1: or district to raise funds for schools and roads. But
Speaker 1: for many Black Americans, like Pleas, high tax bills have
Speaker 1: also become the greatest burden on land ownership, and in
Speaker 1: thousands of US counties, something more is happening. Black Americans
Speaker 1: are experiencing unfairly high taxes. In today's episode, we'll take
Speaker 1: you to one of those places. How the statistics are
Speaker 1: other cruel. The gap between the average income for Negroes
Speaker 1: in this country and the average income for lights has
Speaker 1: not clued. Do you think a Negro family and moving
Speaker 1: here will affect the community as a whole? I think that, well,
Speaker 1: the property utters will immediately go down if they are
Speaker 1: allowed to move in here on any number. So much
Speaker 1: bitterness built up in a person and resentment when you
Speaker 1: know that you're being segregated again simply because you're black. OK.
Speaker 1: At the bottom of the economic letter, the bottom of
Speaker 1: the housing letter, the bottom of the educational letters. We
Speaker 1: have lived. I'm leaving town on Andition for how many years?
Speaker 1: Before hundred years? I was prepared to try to get
Speaker 1: used to having a colored family on the block. Now
Speaker 1: there's another one across the street. You pretty soon they'll
Speaker 1: be one next door, and before you know what, those
Speaker 1: streets are gonna start looking like Harlo Well. I don't
Speaker 1: want to live in a colored slum. I don't want
Speaker 1: to live in a colored slum? Is that terrible? Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield and I'm Jackie Simmons.
Speaker 1: In the US, owning property has been a major driver
Speaker 1: of wealth creation. Last week, we talked about land ownership
Speaker 1: and how black farmland in particular has been chipped away
Speaker 1: over the years. This week, we're turning our attention to
Speaker 1: the heart of the American dream, owning a home. As
Speaker 1: we talked about previously, race and racism has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with who historically has had access to the
Speaker 1: US housing market, and we see those legacies play out
Speaker 1: in the stats today. Nearly three quarters of white families
Speaker 1: own homes, while less than half of black families do.
Speaker 1: This has how white people build wealth in all sorts
Speaker 1: of ways. What's even more troubling is that these disparities
Speaker 1: aren't getting any better. In Black home ownership rates had
Speaker 1: a record low since at least ninety There are lots
Speaker 1: of reasons for that, but at least some of it
Speaker 1: has to do with taxes. A new Bloomberg Business investigation
Speaker 1: uncovers how an unfair taxation system is hitting black homeowners hardest.
Speaker 1: Jason Grotto has the story, I want to take you
Speaker 1: on a journey of what it's like for me when
Speaker 1: I have to pay my rent every month. I don't
Speaker 1: It's the last weekend of the month. So Dilicias Scott
Speaker 1: is on her way to the post office. Ah, can
Speaker 1: I have a money order? I need a money order?
Speaker 1: Where is it going to for a payment? From there,
Speaker 1: she drives north on the freeway, just past Detroit's city
Speaker 1: limit to hand deliver her rent to a drab office
Speaker 1: building Noble for Era. So if I drop it off myself,
Speaker 1: driving here, I know a gay here, I see that
Speaker 1: it went into the building, so no one can say, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't get her payment. This monthly ritual leaves her
Speaker 1: feeling angry and frustrated. That's because this isn't just any
Speaker 1: house she's renting. She's been running a home that for
Speaker 1: years she used to own. It's not just a rental property.
Speaker 1: This is my home right. I raised my children in
Speaker 1: this space, my one thought since he was two years old,
Speaker 1: my other six kids five or six. We did things
Speaker 1: in a home that you can't take out. I can
Speaker 1: pack up my tangible stuff, but I can't pack my memories.
Speaker 1: Despite the trouble it's caused her, Dilicia clings fiercely to
Speaker 1: the two story tutor where she's lived with her three
Speaker 1: children for sixteen years. The landlord refuses to give her
Speaker 1: a lease or fix the collapsing back porch, and when
Speaker 1: it rains well, she needs three buck gets upstairs to
Speaker 1: catch water from the leaky roof. You can tell, brain,
Speaker 1: and you can tell how hard you cant will pour
Speaker 1: in in the drift. So like if I'm sleeping in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and it's start the storm,
Speaker 1: and it's right in real hard, the drifts wants like
Speaker 1: a bucket. The story of how Dilicia lost her home
Speaker 1: is tied up in an injustice that has gone on
Speaker 1: for years and touches nearly every community in the country.
Speaker 1: It's a problem that has contributed to the racial wealth
Speaker 1: gap by saddling lower income, mostly black communities with burdens
Speaker 1: that wealthier and wider ones avoid. It's a systematic injustice
Speaker 1: that lurks in the most mundane of manners, municipal property taxes.
Speaker 1: Dilicia lost her home in two thousand fourteen because she
Speaker 1: fell three years behind on her party taxes. She got
Speaker 1: laid off from her job at a domestic violence shelter
Speaker 1: during the Great Recession. Then her partner, the father of
Speaker 1: her kids, left, drastically reducing the family's monthly income. It
Speaker 1: took her two years to find a job at a
Speaker 1: new shelter. By then, the fees and fines from missing
Speaker 1: payments compounded the money she already owed, leaving her stuck
Speaker 1: in a crushing cycle. I fell into depression. There was
Speaker 1: days where I didn't even realize that my kids had
Speaker 1: to go to school, Like I just couldnt get out
Speaker 1: of the bed. My mental capacity just wasn't there to
Speaker 1: recoup the unpaid taxes. Wayne County, Michigan, foreclosed on her home,
Speaker 1: which she had purchased in two thousand and five for
Speaker 1: sixty three eight hundred dollars. Then the county auctioned it
Speaker 1: off in November two thousand fourteen, and a Utah based
Speaker 1: investment company snapped it up for just forty dollars. Since then,
Speaker 1: the house is old two more times two different investors.
Speaker 1: The last sale in February fetched eighty four thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: eighteen times the price paid six years earlier. Dilysia meanwhile
Speaker 1: lost her entire investment. In fact, she pays more now
Speaker 1: in rent than she did when she had a mortgage.
Speaker 1: But here's the catch. She never should have lost her
Speaker 1: home because their tax bill should never have been that
Speaker 1: high in the first place. For years, Detroit city officials
Speaker 1: used wildly and accurate valuations of the house to calculate
Speaker 1: Dilysia's property tax bills, artificially inflating them by about fifty
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars more than she should have paid, according
Speaker 1: to a Bloomberg analysis of her tax records. Once she
Speaker 1: fell behind, late fees and other penalties made it even
Speaker 1: harder to catch up. After missing two more bill, she
Speaker 1: was nearly ten thousand dollars in the whole Hers was
Speaker 1: among tens of thousands of homes in Detroit's lower income
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods That city officials routinely overvalued for tax purposes. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: homes and affluent areas were systematically undervalued, reducing the taxes
Speaker 1: those homeowners paid. Detroit officials have admitted they over taxed
Speaker 1: about a hundred and thirty thousand people between two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten and two thousand and thirteen, but they say
Speaker 1: that now, while mistakes do happen, the system overall is fair.
Speaker 1: That assessment is disputed by Christopher Barry, who first uncovered
Speaker 1: these inequities. A public policy professor at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 1: Chris has been studying property tax systems for years. I
Speaker 1: met him while working as a reporter in Chicago, where
Speaker 1: he started documenting unfair assessments. He didn't realize that at
Speaker 1: the time, but he was about to embark on years
Speaker 1: research uncovering the fundamental unfairness of property taxes. I had
Speaker 1: kind of been thinking of this as one of these
Speaker 1: only in Chicago sort of phenomena, and there's just so
Speaker 1: many things like this that you get used to if
Speaker 1: your person that lives here in Chicago. But as that
Speaker 1: Chicago work began to do to get attention, I started
Speaker 1: to hear from people elsewhere, and first it was you
Speaker 1: know some activists in Detroit who said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: we read about what's going on in Chicago and the
Speaker 1: work you did there. We're having the same issues here.
Speaker 1: You should take a look. And then it was you know,
Speaker 1: a lawyer in New York says, we've got a lawsuit
Speaker 1: going on similar issues here. And then as a reporter
Speaker 1: in St. Louis, you know, every place I look, I'm
Speaker 1: finding something similar. You know, the names changed, some of
Speaker 1: the details are different, but the overall pattern of unfairness
Speaker 1: and equity is just repeated place after place. Chris found
Speaker 1: that in cities and towns across the US, local officials
Speaker 1: have systematically overvalued the lowest priced homes relative to the highest,
Speaker 1: creating higher effective tax rates for those who can least
Speaker 1: afford to pay. From two thousand and six through two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, inaccurate valuations gave the least expensive homes in
Speaker 1: Baltimore an effective tax rate that was more than two
Speaker 1: times higher than the most expensive in New York City.
Speaker 1: It was three times higher in St. Louis, almost four
Speaker 1: In theory, these taxes should be completely fair. Property taxes
Speaker 1: are what's known as ad valorum Latin for according to value.
Speaker 1: Every property in a given place is supposed to be
Speaker 1: taxed at the same effective rate. What determines that rate
Speaker 1: is the value of the property, and that's where things
Speaker 1: go wrong. Chris found the nature of the problem is
Speaker 1: that people that own lower priced homes are systematically having
Speaker 1: their homes valued at more than their worth, while people
Speaker 1: at the top are systematically having their homes valued at
Speaker 1: less than their worth. And when the values are not right,
Speaker 1: and the values are unequal, then the taxes which are
Speaker 1: just comp huteed based on those values are also going
Speaker 1: to be unequal. Chris found the property tax is deeply
Speaker 1: unfair because it's regressive. That means the burden of the
Speaker 1: tax falls heavier on lower income people. It's the opposite
Speaker 1: of progressive taxes such as the federal income tax, which
Speaker 1: applies higher rates to people with higher incomes. And that's
Speaker 1: a big deal because Americans pay more than five hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year in property taxes. That pays for
Speaker 1: public safety, schools, sanitation, and all the other services cities
Speaker 1: and towns provide. This as a matter of equity and
Speaker 1: our our values as a society. There are lots of
Speaker 1: reasons why people may argue about progressive taxation. I mean,
Speaker 1: should should the rich pay more? But there's really nobody
Speaker 1: who's making a normative argument in favor of regressive taxation,
Speaker 1: right that as a matter of principle, we should have
Speaker 1: the poor pay more. This isn't happening in a vacu.
Speaker 1: The disparities hurt Black communities disproportionately because the legacy of
Speaker 1: racial discrimination has left those communities with a larger share
Speaker 1: of lower priced homes. The median home value in black
Speaker 1: census tracks is nearly half of what it is in
Speaker 1: majority white and Hispanic ones, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
Speaker 1: So the way that shakes out is black homeowners end
Speaker 1: up paying more in property taxes relative to their market
Speaker 1: value than white ones. This is just a textbook example
Speaker 1: of institutional racism or systemic racism, or whatever you'd like
Speaker 1: to label it. And what I mean by that is,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anybody in the assessor's office who's
Speaker 1: sitting there and explicitly saying, hey, let's go in the
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods and you know, jack up their assessments, and
Speaker 1: then let's go into the white neighborhoods and make them
Speaker 1: lower up but nevertheless, the outcomes that we see from
Speaker 1: the system are racially disproportionate, and that's the very definition
Speaker 1: of sort of institutional racism. But of course, these kinds
Speaker 1: of disparities are rooted in a history of racial discrimination
Speaker 1: that is explicit, and it's impossible to understand why this
Speaker 1: taxation disproportionately affects black communities without talking about the US
Speaker 1: legacy of housing segregation. I sat down with Bretton Mock
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg City Lab. He's been covering this for a while. Hey, Breton,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to dig into this. Yeah. Well, it all
Speaker 1: starts with home ownership, which is one of the primary
Speaker 1: ways that many Americans accumulated wealth in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: But it's one that white families have been able to
Speaker 1: capitalize on in ways that black families have not. And
Speaker 1: this runs so much deep for than property taxes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the history here helps explain why Black Americans
Speaker 1: are the ones with lower valued homes to begin with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's the irony. You talked about homes being overvalued
Speaker 1: when it comes to setting the property tax rate. Well,
Speaker 1: many of those same homes are being undervalued by a
Speaker 1: different set of appraisers when it comes to deciding what
Speaker 1: they're worth on the market. Because of racial segregation, properties
Speaker 1: and majority black communities have historically been appraised at much
Speaker 1: lower values and sold at lower prices than similar properties
Speaker 1: and majority white neighborhoods. That kind of price coding has
Speaker 1: pretty much been cemented in the housing market thanks to
Speaker 1: the practice of redlining. Redlining Katerina talked about that in
Speaker 1: episode two. How does that fit into our story? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like Katerina explained, redlining was a government sanctioned program for
Speaker 1: deciding that entire neighborhoods would be considered risky by giving
Speaker 1: them a grade between A and D. Black neighborhoods were
Speaker 1: routinely graded D and literally shaded and read on real
Speaker 1: estate maps in just about every city in the US.
Speaker 1: This practice pretty much ensured that very few people in
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods would be able to purchase houses or even
Speaker 1: get loans to improve homes that were already purchased. But
Speaker 1: those laws have been reformed now have fair housing laws
Speaker 1: at least begun to reduce the gap between white and
Speaker 1: black home appraisals. Well, that's the crazy part. Yes. Starting
Speaker 1: in nine eight with the Fair Housing Act, these particular
Speaker 1: practices were banned. But actually, recent research has found that
Speaker 1: the gap between appraisal values of black and white homes
Speaker 1: has widened. The gap is being exacerbated because the praisers
Speaker 1: currently decide to homes value by looking at the selling
Speaker 1: prices of surrounding homes without any kind of correction. That
Speaker 1: history of low values has just compounded over time. But
Speaker 1: what does that disparity mean in economic terms? So I
Speaker 1: spoke with Andre Perry at the Brookings Institution to help
Speaker 1: put this into context. I worked with him on a
Speaker 1: book several years ago about undervalued black properties. Since then,
Speaker 1: he's done a study to quantify differences in black home values.
Speaker 1: He explained how, after controlling for all housing and neighborhood factors,
Speaker 1: homes and black neighborhoods were under priced in appraisals compared
Speaker 1: to white neighborhoods. By here's Andre, accumulatively, that's about a
Speaker 1: hundred billion in lost equity. And that's just in alone.
Speaker 1: I always put it in in um perspective. Um, the
Speaker 1: hundred fifty six billion would have financed more than four
Speaker 1: point four million black owned businesses based on the average
Speaker 1: amount Blacks used to start up their firms, they would
Speaker 1: have paid for more than eight million UM college degrees
Speaker 1: based on the average amount of a public education. Now,
Speaker 1: this is money that is really robbing people of the
Speaker 1: opportunity to lift themselves up. And remember where we started
Speaker 1: this conversation, the racial wealth gap. These differences matter because
Speaker 1: home massets are supposed to appreciate as they are passed
Speaker 1: down through generations. As Andre puts it, wealth begets wealth.
Speaker 1: So if you are able to own a home, if
Speaker 1: your grandfather was able to own a home and they
Speaker 1: and here's he had children, he could pass on the
Speaker 1: equity gained from that house to the child, or UM
Speaker 1: you can apply it to um the college education, you
Speaker 1: can use it to start a business. Remember most people
Speaker 1: start their their business using the equity in their home.
Speaker 1: So UM, if you did not have if your grandfather
Speaker 1: great grandfather could not own a home, it's it's less
Speaker 1: likely you're going to be able to have wealth. Dilicia
Speaker 1: is acutely aware of this relationship between home ownership and wealth.
Speaker 1: It's why she's so doggedly committed to buying her home back,
Speaker 1: despite the perversity of the costs she has already borne.
Speaker 1: Like so many other parents, She's concerned about leaving her
Speaker 1: three kids an asset that will give them a leg
Speaker 1: up because she believes they'll be better off in the
Speaker 1: long run. For her, the house could be a source
Speaker 1: of foundational wealth. You know, I just want to leave
Speaker 1: them more than a couple of insurance policy. And that's
Speaker 1: that's the only thing. A couple of insurance policy and
Speaker 1: a ragny car. That's the only thing I have to
Speaker 1: offer them right now. And that's not fear for them.
Speaker 1: And I have to think about my mortality. I have
Speaker 1: to think about a plan. What is going to happen
Speaker 1: to them? Um, I don't want them even if if
Speaker 1: if I'm a going to buy this house, I don't
Speaker 1: want them to have to live there for the rest
Speaker 1: of them their lives. Like but I want them to
Speaker 1: have an asset right. Dilicia lost the home after was
Speaker 1: overvalued by a property tax assessor. Even though many of
Speaker 1: the same homes get undervalued when it comes to appraising
Speaker 1: their market price, how does that happen? To understand that,
Speaker 1: you need to get an idea for how local tax
Speaker 1: officials determine the value of homes. Unlike appraisers assessors aren't
Speaker 1: able to visit every home in the city. Instead, they
Speaker 1: look at the prices of homes that have sold within
Speaker 1: the last year or so. They then use computer models
Speaker 1: to estimate the value for all the homes in the area.
Speaker 1: But those computer models are only as good as the
Speaker 1: data going into them. It turns out there are some
Speaker 1: significant gaps in the data, and those gaps lead to
Speaker 1: some pretty serious errors that cause unfair assessments to creep in,
Speaker 1: especially for people in lower valued homes. Chris explains, I
Speaker 1: often try to explain this to people by imagining that
Speaker 1: we did income taxes the same way we did property taxes.
Speaker 1: So imagine that the i r S each year only
Speaker 1: got a W two for about one percent of the population.
Speaker 1: So for one percent of the people, the i r
Speaker 1: S actually knows what your income was, and for the
Speaker 1: other people they have to guess. They have to guess
Speaker 1: what your income is. And as a taxpayer, you don't
Speaker 1: file taxes. You just get a letter from the hares
Speaker 1: each year saying, hey, we guessed that you made a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars last year. Here's your tax bill. That's
Speaker 1: how we do property taxes. And if we did income
Speaker 1: that way. I think it would be pretty obvious to
Speaker 1: people the ways in which that would be sort of
Speaker 1: incorrect and unfair. Just to build on the professor's analogy,
Speaker 1: local property tax officials do a bit more than just
Speaker 1: flat out guessing. They try to compare similar homes. Say
Speaker 1: a four bedroom, two bathroom branch sells for two dollars.
Speaker 1: Local officials will use that information to help guide how
Speaker 1: they assess the value of other four bedroom to bathroom
Speaker 1: ranch houses in the same area or neighborhood. If the
Speaker 1: i R S used that same method to set income taxes,
Speaker 1: the resulting unfairness becomes pretty clear. Suppose they knew nothing
Speaker 1: about you at all. The best they could guess is
Speaker 1: that you were making the average income. They'd say, we
Speaker 1: think you made the average income last year. Pay taxes
Speaker 1: on the average income. Well, that's really bad for people
Speaker 1: who earned below the average, because they're being treated as
Speaker 1: if they earned more than they did, and they're paying
Speaker 1: taxes that are too high. But it's a great deal
Speaker 1: for people who were above average, because they're being told
Speaker 1: they were average and they're paying taxes that are too low.
Speaker 1: And so you can already see the inequity that's built
Speaker 1: in this kind of averaging. That's what would happen if
Speaker 1: they had no data about you at all. Even with
Speaker 1: a little more data, the method that local officials used
Speaker 1: to set property values just isn't robust enough to capture
Speaker 1: important differences in market values among different homes for people
Speaker 1: like Delicia, those flaws can be disastrous. In fact, in
Speaker 1: places like Detroit, they just don't keep black families from
Speaker 1: acquiring and passing down wealth, they contribute to the actual
Speaker 1: destruction of it. One of the things we know about
Speaker 1: that the whole property tax process is that when people
Speaker 1: can't pay, they are subject of various kinds of sanctions
Speaker 1: by the state. And so you may have had your
Speaker 1: home systematically over tax overcharged too much, and then if
Speaker 1: you can't pay those unfair taxes, you might lose your
Speaker 1: home due to a tax foreclosure, or you might have
Speaker 1: your home sold from out from under YouTube some kind
Speaker 1: of investment firm that that is going around buying up
Speaker 1: these low value at homes. And you know, there's nowhere
Speaker 1: in the country where this has been a bigger problem
Speaker 1: than Detroit, where fully one quarter of all home in
Speaker 1: Detroit have been foreclosed on for failure to pay taxes.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about any mortgage foreclosure here, but in
Speaker 1: fact a tax foreclosure. In fact, Detroit officials have admitted
Speaker 1: they over taxed tens of thousands of people. Yet the
Speaker 1: property tax system is so complicated that Dilicia didn't find
Speaker 1: out about being overtaxed until she read about Chris's work
Speaker 1: in her local newspaper in February two thowy six years
Speaker 1: after she lost her home. Soon after, she reached out
Speaker 1: to him, but by that point there was nothing she
Speaker 1: could do about it. It's embarrassing right there. I feel
Speaker 1: like there is no safe place for me to hand
Speaker 1: this conversation because I'm going to get a judge one
Speaker 1: way or another. Uh, you know, it's it's a lot.
Speaker 1: I feel betrayed too. Yeah, I feel left behind. I
Speaker 1: feel left behind. And then and then well, last year,
Speaker 1: to learn that I was overtaxed why five thousand. It
Speaker 1: makes me sad, It makes me depress, It makes me
Speaker 1: feel like a failure. And that's another consequence of broken
Speaker 1: tax systems. People like Dilicia are forced to process and
Speaker 1: struggle with the shame of it all, even though what's
Speaker 1: happened isn't her fault because she was treated unfairly. In fact,
Speaker 1: Dilicia is so ashamed that six years on she still
Speaker 1: hadn't told her children that she had lost the home.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eventually have to have that conversation. I don't
Speaker 1: know how, UM, but I figure I have to get
Speaker 1: myself a time frame because I don't know. UM is
Speaker 1: very scary right now, not being on the least um.
Speaker 1: But I have to have a plan for them, Like
Speaker 1: I just can't just say like, oh, this is it
Speaker 1: and okay, see you guys later. They don't deserve this.
Speaker 1: My daughter actually she looked it up and she said, huh,
Speaker 1: I was on this site. This is a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago, and I was on this site, and it's
Speaker 1: that our house was stolen in February. And that's it. Girl,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. Since Detroit officials
Speaker 1: admitted to pass problems, they say they fixed the system
Speaker 1: and that now it's fair. Yet Chris is found that
Speaker 1: property taxes in Detroit continue to be really regressive still.
Speaker 1: Alvin Horne, the city's top assessment official, has come out
Speaker 1: against Chris's findings. Here. He is at a recent press
Speaker 1: conference evaluation, and a very smart person once told me this,
Speaker 1: there's an art, not a science. You have the facts,
Speaker 1: but you also have to understand the market Detroit as
Speaker 1: a unique market, and you can't. You can't get those
Speaker 1: nuances simply from a sales study. You have to live
Speaker 1: here and you have to understand what's going on here
Speaker 1: to understand valuation. At that same press conference, he and
Speaker 1: Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan criticized Chris for refusing to share
Speaker 1: the data underlying the study, but later, in an interview
Speaker 1: with me, the top possessor admitted he had seen the data,
Speaker 1: saying that on average, Detroit system is fair, while acknowledging
Speaker 1: that mistakes can still happen. The data say otherwise. In fact,
Speaker 1: I replicated parts of Chris's analysis and found the same thing,
Speaker 1: Detroit system remains deeply unfair. Despite everything she's been through,
Speaker 1: Dilicia still holds onto the hope that she can buy
Speaker 1: back her home. To try to save for a down payment,
Speaker 1: she took on a second job in October, delivering food
Speaker 1: via door dash. Usually, what what happens a typical day
Speaker 1: for me during a week is, um I go to work,
Speaker 1: like when I work on site, I'll go to work.
Speaker 1: Then straight from work, I get in my car, I
Speaker 1: turned my dash app and I started dashing to probably
Speaker 1: about ten eleven o'clock at night. Then I do it
Speaker 1: again on the weekend. Sometimes when she's out delivering food
Speaker 1: in more affluent neighborhoods, Delicia can't help but consider all
Speaker 1: that's happened to her. I don't need fancy homes, and
Speaker 1: they just so nice. They all lit up and beautiful
Speaker 1: and um. Last night I went to a house and
Speaker 1: they had like about five or six brand new cars
Speaker 1: in the driveway. And all I think of when I
Speaker 1: see this, like this is nice, this is real nice.
Speaker 1: All I want is my piece of like like like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it would be nice, but I just want
Speaker 1: what what I've worked so hard for. Lisa's experience shows
Speaker 1: one way the system keeps many black families off the
Speaker 1: wealth ladder that is home ownership. For plays back in Texas,
Speaker 1: there was never going to be a farm or profits
Speaker 1: from oil or timber. Instead, with no buyer in sight,
Speaker 1: he's stuck with the land and is now on the
Speaker 1: hook for at least sixty dollars and taxes and penalties.
Speaker 1: That's on top of as much as sixteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: He says he and some family members have already paid
Speaker 1: for the record. I dug into county documents and talked
Speaker 1: to local officials. Indeed, his tax bill jumped between two
Speaker 1: thousand nine and two ten, more than double, but the
Speaker 1: county tax assessor says that overall the tax liability is
Speaker 1: where it is because he hasn't paid taxes as they
Speaker 1: came to Plas, is now facing foreclosure, and between his
Speaker 1: Social Security checks and some income from a side business
Speaker 1: fixing computers, he makes sense meet, but says sometimes he's
Speaker 1: just living paycheck to paycheck. For the next few episodes,
Speaker 1: we'll be looking at ways to close the racial wealth gap.
Speaker 1: First up, a program that works, but it's highly controversial.
Speaker 1: Without that extra step, you know, I may would have
Speaker 1: done okay in life, but I doubt if I would
Speaker 1: have I would have gotten a PhD by the time
Speaker 1: I was twenty six, and I doubt if I would
Speaker 1: have been a profess at the age. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to The Paycheck. If you like the show, please rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was
Speaker 1: hosted by me Rebecca Greenfield and Me Jackie Simmons. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was edited by Nicole Flato and Francesco Leady. It
Speaker 1: was reported with the help of Jason Grotto and Brenton Mock.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson. We also had
Speaker 1: production help from Lindsay Cradowell and editing help Janet Paskin,
Speaker 1: Rock Shoto, Soluja, John Boskell, Jackie Simmons and me. Our
Speaker 1: original music is by Leo Sidrome. Francesca Levie is Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: head of podcasts. We'll see you next time.