Roll-back! Fight gentrification with lower rates

Higher property assessments shall come in August, which could translate into higher property taxes for many poorer Orleans Parish residents struggling to hold onto their homes, or already facing mounting rental bills. That is unless the Cantrell Administration and the New Orleans City Council fulfill the promise of the “IQ ticket” and the post-Katrina reform movement for fair property assessments—which would allow millages that have been rolled back TO STAY rolled back—while still collecting the same amount of money. Our leaders need to fight the urge to enact a stealth tax increase.

It’s a peculiar quirk of Louisiana law. Normally, the LA Constitution mandates a public vote to increase property taxes. Theoretically, following that logic, state law also requires millages to roll back to the higher property assessments, so as to keep the property tax revenues constant— and to avoid a tax increase without a referendum. However, there’s a loophole in our law. A supermajority of any governing body – not the public – can roll those millage back forward to their previous rate without a public vote.

It’s a stealth tax increase, by any other name, contrary to the spirit of letting the public decide on property taxes. Too often in the last eight years, LaToya Cantrell and several members of the current council have resorted to this tactic to augment the city treasury. Too often they have ignored the insidious subtext of such a stealth tax increase. Poorer homeowners find themselves stuck with drastically higher taxes—all for the sin of wishing to remain in their own homes; homes that are unaltered or in any other way made-morally-liable for higher tax rates other than their simple existence. Most often, these are homes owned by African-American families already struggling to remain in their historic neighborhoods

The Editorial Board of The Louisiana Weekly has both long decried “roll forwards” enacted without a public vote. To mitigate their effects, our Editors also supported a constitutional amendment in the last legislative session which would have given the Orleans City Council the right to selectively lower property tax increases on those making less than $70,000 a year. Unfortunately, that income-based reform failed.

Which leaves the New Orleans City Council, the Mayor, and the other municipal taxing bodies (such as the Orleans Parish School Board and the Audubon Commission) with a choice. Almost 26,000 residential properties — almost one in six citywide — sit in neighborhoods that saw average sales prices jump by more than half over the past four years, according to Assessor Erroll Williams. Of these, 9,500 are located in what was formally African-American majority neighborhoods and where homesale costs went up by more than 75 percent, with thousands more properties remaining in areas where prices more than doubled. That means, under existing law, corresponding assessments on properties that have been in families for decades or longer, with no ostensible changes, also will shoot up in taxable value. It doesn’t matter if the family in question makes the same — or less — than they did four years ago during the last assessment cycle. Nor does it account for their house sitting unaltered. If their neighbors’ homes jump in value, they will still see a huge tax increase, a potentially debilitating tax increase, if the City Council and the other authorities opt to keep the property tax rate at the current level.

The typical Orleans Parish milliage rate is already 151.08, quite higher than the average in Jefferson at 121, St. Bernard at 143, and nowhere near as low as 65 in many parts of nearby Plaquemines. Higher assessments in 2019 could provide the opportunity for the City Council to roll back the rate permanently to something equivalent to St. Bernard, and maybe eventually Jefferson, whilst still collecting the same amount of money as the previous year. That would allow some people’s overall tax rate to go down, potentially enough of a decrease for many to afford to stay in their own homes—and others to avoid drastic and debilitating increases in their rents.

Rich people can afford higher taxes, while poor people are forced to move out of Orleans Parish to simply keep a roof over their heads. The process is called gentrification, and many otherwise progressive politicians seem to forget that their hunger for higher tax revenue constitutes one of the principal drivers of impoverished Black people from New Orleans. Lacking a legal vehicle to mitigate property tax increases based on income, high milliages fuel the tragic reality of ‘whitening’ of neighborhoods.

The Cantrell Administration will cite legitimate needs for new revenues to rebuild sewerage systems and other infrastructure in the coming months. Equivalent priorities will be expressed from the city’s school and park system governing boards. However, If these pleas for funding do not come with the commitment to a public milliage election, they should be rejected.

Let the electorate decide if the tax rate should be higher! They are the ones will lose their homes if the tax bills become too great.

This article originally published in the July 15, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.