The Houston Chronicle ran a story today about property taxes titled, “Older black communities fall on taxing times“.
The spin on this story is that the poor blacks that inherited homes are losing them because of taxing authorities. Paul Bettencourt is mentioned as one of the evil ones:
In recent years, Bettencourt’s office has stepped up efforts to collect on unpaid taxes. Since 2002, the tax collector has more than doubled the revenue from foreclosure sales: From $14 million to $32 million in 2005, the last year data was available.
In addition, the county has increased the number of properties at its foreclosure sales, auctioning 328 in August, 389 in September and 447 this month.
“We do everything to avoid this,” said Bettencourt, who on Tuesday spoke outside the Harris County Family Law Center, where the latest an auction took place. “Foreclosures are the last resort.”
Listen up folks: Bettencourt is only the “enforcer“; it is his job to collect the taxes. Bettencourt is not to be blamed, the laws are to be blamed!!!
This is what Dan Patrick, CLOUT, Edd Hendee, et al. have been trying to say all along: high property taxes are not a left/right or Democrat/Republican issue. If anything, it hurts the poor more than the middle class.
You should read the whole article. It is also a great illustrator about how the poor regard taxes. When they have been exempt from them for so long, they don’t “get it” and prepare for it.
That doesn’t make it my fault, which is what the Chronicle seems to be spinning toward.
This whole past year I have been preparing for the Tax Man. It is going to hurt us more this year than any other year of my life because of the change of my employment status and health. But I don’t bury my head in my yard and wish it all away. I prepare and pay.
As for losing family property, I can heavily relate to that also. (Sorry to keep being so personal.) My parents are trying to sell their home on Lake Livingston. Why? They can’t pay the taxes. The taxes are crushing them to the point that they have very little, as in close to zero, “disposable income” (even with over-65 rates). That means that once the bills are paid, their “entertainment” is to sit in the house and to be careful about running the a/c in the summer or heat in the winter. But they prepare and pay the taxes.
As the old saying goes, the only certain things in life are death and taxes…
By the way, I don’t believe the taxes on these people are fair. But they aren’t fair to anyone; that’s why I support the fight to get them changed.
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37 Responses to “Chronicle on Property Taxes: Minorities & Poor Hardest Hit”Search
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Good post, Ree-C. How can they possibly blame Bettencourt? I don’t get that.
Because Bettencourt is conservative.
I applaud your article Ree C and I just want to ask the question?
What fight for lower property taxes?
Whose running for school boards to stop the never ending readjustment and out of control spending by your local govt?
Whose opposing the billion dollar totally uneeded Bond Issue of Cy Fair and the 1/2 billion dollar bond issue of Klein?
Whose standing up, where is your waters edge what is your limit.
People need to go to these board meetings, they need to speak out at these meetings,
Buying carpet paint bussess and laptops with 23 and 25 year mortgages
The lap top your 1st grader gets to use you and your child will still be paying for 25 years later
enough is enough and the test scores still keep going down despite now 100 of millions spent in just those two school districts on Technology.
How about a good text book and a well paid teacher and a administration that enforces discipline
How about that
Everything I’ve ever read or heard about Bettencourt indicates he’d rather the prop taxes be lowered and more fairly assessed…………
I worked in a black neighborhood, Pleasantville, over by the ship channel behind the Budweiser plant. It was a working class black neighborhood where the older people were dying off and the kids inherited the homes. Many turned into crack houses. I would make a call at older people’s homes and talk to them and they would tell me how the neighborhood was going downhill. I usually respondd to their calls for thefts and prowlers. You could mostly tell from the street if older people owned the home. The lawn would be mowed and the shrubs manicured. The others were shabby and unkempt. It was sad to see. The kids never paid the taxes and let the places go to crap while they sat around smoking rock. This I saw first hand! The rising taxes in those areas are not as much a problem as a breakdown in the black family. The ones with a stable mom and dad married for life, took care of their property and it showed. Bettencourt is definitely not the problem.
Bettencourt is definitely on our side. I wonder though how we have come to this juncture. Look at the battles that take place over property rights.
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
-John Adams
Dan Patrick has done what he can, now it’s up to us to force the change.
If these liberal democrats are so concerned perhaps they should join with Paul Bettencourt, Dan Patrick, Edd Hendee and the rest that have been trying to do something about this for MANY years.
They could have hit the holy trinity of Republican bashing if they had only remembered the children. Everyone always forgets the children. Sigh…..
Have your parents considered deferring their taxes? If they are over 65, they can stop paying them all together as long as this is their homestead.
There is no reason for an over 65 couple to lose their home to property taxes.
By the way, the Comical article is significantly flawed. The Batteau home she is talking about isn’t even a homestead and the woman living there does not own the property due to the family squabble. If it were a homestead, she could defer taxes too.
Plus, if you don’t pay your taxes, you will lose your home. Plus, Paul is doing exactly what he is elected to do, collect taxes from people who owe them.
If it was left up to the Dimwits, we would only tax and collect from the rich and never collect from the poor. The Dimwits would pass legislation protecting or providing for the poor (aka part of their voting base) instead of making everything equal for all. It is just like the foreclosure problem, the Dimwits want to bail them out too. Look they got themselves into the problem, I’m sorry, but the Dimwits, using the “big government” concept will fix any and all problems.
Well, I commented on the Chronicle site and called them (the Chronicle) out for supporting spending projects and not supporting tax reform and Edd’s lawsuit. The Chronicle loves the spending that is partially responsible for the problem they are reporting and completely responisble for our tax crisis.
I wonder how long my post is allowed to stay?
trl3 We have just as many Republicans working against property tax reform. Like several have said, this isn’t a republican vs. Democrat issue.
Robert M
On the national level, to a large degree that is already being done. This last adjustment by Bush removed people that make less than +-20k (I forget the exact number) from the tax roles.
On the local city level they are locked into taxing property (your home) and just have not found a way to link that to whether you pay the tax based on income.
Oh yeah and they would have to find a way to “pay” for the taxcut by passing that “cost” on to the rich. I shudder to think what Mayor Bolilo’s definition of rich would be.
Now that it is happening in minority neighborhoods maybe the Dems will be for reduction in property taxes. Of course they will come up with a “Robin Hood” plan. But Custer is right. In this instance, it really had nothing to do with rising property taxes. It was about inaction on the part of the family profiled. It could have all been avoided.
You never own your own property..
You only rent it from the government..
ya’all remember now - its for the children.
cheat on all the tax fronts with people like this in office. they lie to us to get elected and then do what the lobby wants and screw the constituents. for people like that lie on all tax fronts and make them come at us a different way if we cant get them out of office because of the big money.
Bettencourt is just doing his job. We all know that he is an advocate for the tax payer. The problem is that the Tax Assessors office is charged with raising money. In my opinion, however, they should not be the organization setting the value of the property they tax. The real estate industry should be doing this without coercion from the tax authorities. Property should be taxed at it’s real value, not some arbitrary value which is set to increase every tax year. We are forced to pay ever increasing taxes on unrealized increases in value. It just doesn’t seem right.
BTW, I’m not far from needing to sell my home and move to something smaller because of tax creep. How many others face this issue?
Look on the bright side. You will soon live in an ‘up-scale’ neighborhood without even moving.
You never own your own property..
You only rent it from the government..
I bet thats how our founders wanted it?
God Bless America
The article says “Crummyicle on Property Taxes: Minorities and Poor Hardest Hit”—how can they be the hardest hit if everybody is TAXED EQUALLY according to PROPERTY VALUES. How about the TAX RATE IS TOO HIGH, maybe that’s why the minorities and poor are hit harder–granted they have less to make the payments with but if government would quit wasting money, they wouldn’t have to tax so much, especially on the minorities and poor. Oh, and by the way, by “minorities” do they mean, blacks, hispanics, women, asians and/or any other group classified as minorities???
Ree-C - Is the home your parents are trying to sell homesteaded? If so and they are over 65 they can file for deferred taxes. Then they NEVER have to pay any more property taxes on their home. It does collect interest on the owed taxes, but not delinquent/attorney’s fees. Then the taxes are paid when they both pass away.
its nice living in texas work all your life to pay off your house and try to leave it to your heirs and then have the tax man wind up with the spoils - wow what a tax system.
Thanks for mentioning the deferred tax for my parents.
They looked at it (they are eligible), but they do not want to leave the problem for us when they are gone.
In the end, they decided it was best to sell. So far they haven’t found a buyer. They plan to move closer to us and of course, doctors and health care.
I have compared selling prices in low income and high income neighborhoods vs property tax values on hcad and I have found on avarage that the homes in better neighborhoods have a far bigger spread between property tax value and the actual selling price.
Deferring taxes is a good idea only if you have no heirs.
If taxes are deferred, keep in mind that the heirs must pay the taxes, after the owners pass away.
at 8% annual interest, it would not take long to amount to tens of thousands of dollars, and if there is still a mortgage on the property in addition to the taxes, the property could quickly be “upside down” in market value.
Ree-C I would like to commend you for actually opening that rag and reading it. I don’t. The articles are not well written, factual, or without spin. I should submit your name for a medal. The ” I Survived reading the Chronicle ” medal.
I’m trying to muster up sympathy, and I really do feel for them. But, then, the article points out that heirs have squandered the money, and then not paid the taxes for many years before getting foreclosed. One woman didn’t pay for 10 years, owes $43,000, so she has to repay $11,000 over the next 3 years (I assume she also has to pay the current years, but maybe not)
The same people who represent these homeowners campaigned against appraisal caps, because the schools need unlimited funds.
Rep Coleman proposed tripling the homestead exemption, but that won’t help many of these same people, because they are occupied by relatives living in the home and are not owner-occupied. Same reason they can’t defer their taxes.
65% of property in Houston is rental, and often those who rent are proportionally poorer than those who buy. So, we can do whatever we want to the homestead exemption and it would do nothing for many of the ones who need the break. The apartments and rental houses would still cost more to live in. If the homestead exemption was to go to $45,000 that would translate into a rental property still owing the government about $112 per month more than the neighbor who has a homesteaded property. Who pays? The renter, of course. The only was to affect all residents would be to extend the exemption to all residential property regardless of who owns it. But then the politicians are afraid that the big bad rich real estate investor would somehow get rich off the back of the poor renter. So they don’t get appraisal caps, or exemptions and have to pass the cost along in the form of rent. Is this fair taxation? And furthermore, isn’t this a betrayal of the people they claim to represent?
#26
The property taxes owed would be on the estate. The heirs themselves do not incur any debt. Frankly I don’t look to my parents (mother only now) to leave me anything. It’s their money/property to do with as they please when they are alive and anything that makes it easier is a good thing.
I don’t feel sorry for these people either. After all they inherited the house which would mean in many, if not all, cases the house was free to them. Now they gripe cause they gotta pay taxes like the rest of us (who also had to PAY for their house)?
Ree-C, no one caught your reference to the punch line of the joke where the east coast is destroyed by a comet, the NYT’s headline the following day,”Entire Eastern Seaboard and Population Destroyed-women, minorities and children hardest hit”
Not only are persons over 65 allowed not to pay their property taxes, the law also “abates” or blocks a foreclosure law suit agains them. All they have to do is demonstrate their age. It is true that the taxes are due when the home is sold, but the home CAN NOT be taken from them while they live. (I know this is the case played a samll role in passing both these laws back in the 70s.)
Perhaps Mr. Bettencourt needs to do a better job of publicizing the existing law!
Perhaps the local counties could do this automatically and remove Mr. Bettencourt from the responsibility or adverstising this.
Two other brief points:
* I am glad to see that the old myth about “renters” not paying property taxes hasn’t come up in this discussion. The landlord includes the cost of rent as part of their monthly rental charges. In addition, back in the 80s I saw several studies that indicated that renters, in fact, PAID A HIGHER PERCENTAGE of their income in property taxes than did property owners. (Basically because, in general, their incomes are lower.) I would not totally rely on these studies today as they are somewhat out of date. But there may have been new ones in more recent days or perhaps someone will do one.
* One “real” solution to too high property taxes is the “circuit breaker” which limits the total property tax bill the owner must pay to being no more than a set percentage of his/her total income. In most cases, it is no more than 5%. Several states use this method. In most cases, it is a state that also has an income tax and they impelement the limit by allowing the property tax payer to deduct any property tax they have paid about the circuit breaker limit from their income taxes. When the deduction is more than any income tax they may owe, some might even send the taxpayer a check for the difference. Bills to establish a curcuit breaker system in Texas have been filed a number of times, but the problem has always been how to implement them since we do not have the easy mechanism of using the income tax. Of course, no one wants to implement an income tax just so we can make it easier to have a curcuit breaker! Maybe Mr. Bettencourt and friends should consider looking into a curcuit breaker in Texas.
Poor Paul, do you people even have a clue how he fights for us? The Chronicle despises him, ’nuff said.
I suppose they can blame PB in an attempt to appear as if they are for the poor; all the while still being sycophants for the tax and spenders.
GoodJobTim: YOU ARE CORRECT!!
For figuring out the punchline, you win a free one year subscription to LST!!!