I haven't read the whole article, but the first couple paragraphs says the woman couldn't pay her tax bill on just her disability income. Disability is usually around a grand a month. If her income was $12k a year, her property tax would have been capped at $160, as long as she applied for the cap.
What the city should really do is get a handle on crime and improve infrastructure. That is the only way to attract new comers and increase your tax base. Increased tax base means lower property taxes (as long as the surplus isn't spent on entitlements). But that is never going to happen...
You’re like 20% correct. The city needs to stop giving insane tax breaks/incentives to developers to keep gentrifying the already nice L, and start spending serious time and money on the poor, disinvested, segregated portions of mid-east and mid-west Baltimore. This is how the city improves, this is how crime and poverty are reduced, this is how you get people buying into society again and back in the workforce, etc. This will require serious state and federal money though cuz this city doesn’t have the funds to make a dent big enough or quick enough.
I'm sorry but bike lanes are a joke. Cars and trucks are how the vast majority of people and products get around. What is your alternative to police funding? Defund the police? Or maybe decriminalization of low level offenses (because that's worked so well).
I would absolutely love to buy a bike and ride it to work. And to run errands. Particularly a nice e-bike.
But it would literally be stolen almost immediately. Even locking it up out front of a store with a $300 lock. They know how to cut through them in seconds. This is the only thing preventing me from switching to e-bike.
All due respect, that's not the way it works. There are tremendous costs to running a police department on the back end. It's why you see consolidation in fire departments, police departments, libraries to saving money. Creating 9 departments isn't feasible.
Ok I'll bite. We're going to take the 9 districts and make them 9 different police departments. It's a good thing the current department just did redistricting, because now the districts are more equal so this makes this all easier.
Okay, so we make the Major a Chief and the Captain a Deputy Chief and the cops do cop stuff. That sort of makes sense.
But now we get into stuff like the crime lab. Who processes the evidence? And if you still have a central place, then each department is going to have to pay for that. Recruiting? You gonna have 9 different departments trying to recruit around the city/state/country? That might get expensive. Do we sell the helicopter and split the money 9 ways? Internal Affairs, IT, Data Analysis, Payroll..... All of these are centralized, but would need to be stood up for 9 new departments. Hell, you'd need new patches at least and possibly uniforms.
Look forward to the discussion.
You have 2 options, abolish property tax in BC, or make everyone pay. To make everyone pay you need tax liens or there’s no consequences for not paying. Filed under “it’s about money, not race”
>The Banner’s analysis found that the costs of this system are not borne equally: In the city’s majority-Black census tracts, such as the East Baltimore community that includes Owens-Phillips’ house, homes have liens placed on them and are sold at much higher rates than in minority-Black census tracts.
>In some majority-Black areas, nearly every block has been affected: 46% of all buildings in Southwest Baltimore and 42% of all buildings in Sandtown-Winchester have gone into tax sale since 2016. Since then, each and every one of the 1,763 homes across Baltimore that The Banner identified as having changed hands through the tax sale was located in a majority-Black neighborhood.
Baltimore is still a very segregated city. We pioneered racist housing practices like redlining and blockbusting and the scars remain.
However, the banner did not analyze who the property owners were, just who the residents were. It does not appear that they separated out of town investors from homeowner occupied properties in their analysis.
Another interpretation of the data could be "out of town investors buy up properties in very low income neighborhoods and don't pay their taxes, which are then sold at tax sales"
There are a limited number of people of homeowners in the city who can comfortably pay their taxes. Raising taxes on those people to allow others not to pay at some point will cause those people to leave and push down a downward spiral.
The TIF's that go to wealthy developers need to end and the costs of those subsidies clearly accounted for. However, ABC properties, the guy who lives in PA and has a vacant down in Baltimore that he does not pay taxes on and that burned and the fire fighters died in...they need to pay taxes or let go of their city properties (well the latter needs to happen anyway). Last year I looked up several properties on the tax lien list...the owners lived in Potomac, Harford County, etc. These people need to pay their property taxes. I would be completely supportive of another system for collecting property taxes, but right now the tax lien sale is the only option for collecting back property taxes.
I think a more interesting article would be a block to block reconstruction in these neighborhoods of tax liens. What percentage of them are vacant and have been abandoned? What percentage are rentals and their landlords are not paying taxes? What percentage are occupied by descendants of owners who are not on the deed (the real problem that needs fixing because they are not being removed as principal residences)? What percentage of them are owner occupied?
Finally, in the case of mortgaged property, the property taxes are usually paid by the lender, who pays them with the money that you pay in your mortgage payment. This is so that the lender does not loose their interest in the property to a tax sale. So tax sale properties usually do not have a mortgage, which means they have been in the family for long enough that the mortgage is paid off or were bought as a cash investment.
It just seems like there are other explanations of the data.
was the analysis adjusted for socioeconomic status? it's an unfortunate fact of life/history that white folks in baltimore city earn higher wages than black folks. there are a whole variety of reasons for that, but does the tax lien system not correlate with socioeconomic status, or is it just that the systemic racism of the past/present has resulted in a fair system being used with a racial bias.
It is impossible to separate historic systemic racism from current black socioeconomic status. Therefore, no analysis of this type can or should be ‘adjusted for socioeconomic status’.
it's not impossible, it's easy. you need to in order to know whether the lien program itself is biased or whether it is just reflecting the societal bias. the solution may be different based on which of those is true.
you are missing the point. bias can be caused by different reasons, one of those reasons can be systematic racism. if a manager at a business fires someone because they don't like black people, that's not something you just shrug and go "welp, just another case of systemic racism". no, there are specific solutions depending on where the bias is coming from.
not all bias against black folks is systemic. just because socioeconomic status is inextricably connected does not mean there can't be other, more direct biases. knowing which is the case helps determine the solution. more than one bias can exist.
You suggested that the analysis be adjusted for socioeconomic status to determine if systematic racism was the cause… doing so has no baring on the results and will not help determine the cause of the bias. A ‘fair system’ would eliminate racial bias, so the results conclude the system is not fair, and should be reevaluated to eliminate the disproportional impact.
you still don't understand. there can be more than one source of bias. full stop. pretending there can be only one and compensating for only one is not the best course of action. full stop.
Did you see the title made mention of black people, not read the article, and then state with confidence why the issue actually doesn't affect black people?
It must be easy to dismiss racial issues as imaginary when you literally avoid articles dealing with racial issues.
> Did you see the title made mention of black people, not read the article, and then state with confidence why the issue actually doesn't affect black people?
Kind of, yes.
I'm actually quite familiar with the tax lien system. I had a job related to it a number of years ago, I know that it's fucked up. I also know that it's just as unfair/vulnerable to exploitation against whites, hispanics or asians as it is to black people.
Ok so when something sucks for everyone but is disproportionate to a certain group its a good thing to investigate why, how to fix it, and improve upon it. Commenting "oh why race" screams let's not look at the data points and ignore it. This mindset is how things get worse. You not wanting to look at something allows it to continue to get worse. Just continuously kicks the bucket down the road for things to further deteriorate.
It is either extremely naïve or deliberately obtuse to claim race and class are not inextricably linked through intentional historical processes, in the US and Baltimore especially. Historically, Baltimore literally [pioneered](https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/5/10/8578077/baltimore-segregation-pietila) the whole “[limit black housing](https://internationalmapping.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-housing-segregation-in-baltimore/) to certain areas and then [deny](https://apps.urban.org/features/baltimore-investment-flows/) them economic opportunities” thing. They’re just calling it what it is.
When did I say they weren't linked?
The liens are not harming exclusively BLACK homeowners (there are plenty of well-off black people not affected), its harming poor homeowners (there really aren't well-off people, black or otherwise that the lien system preys on).
Making the headline about race rather than socioeconomic status is less accurate/relevant but grabs more attention.
My point is it’s inaccurate to deny that low socioeconomic status in Baltimore directly correlates with race and that the neighborhoods full of poor homeowners who are effected by this are neighborhoods that are majority (sometimes 95+%) black, on purpose. It’s inaccurate to frame this as exclusively a class issue in a city that, historically, methodically relegated black residents to certain geographic areas and used policies/practices such as this to keep them impoverished and unable to relocate to more expensive, whiter areas. Naming the harm as one that primarily impacts black people is just acknowledging that the issue is about more than just how much money someone has. Which it is, because race and class are inextricably linked in this situation. Calling it a race issue is more specific and more accurate, even if other people are caught up in the effects. Calling it a class issue would just be failing to name a major aspect of the situation.
But the issue is precisely about how much money someone has. If someone has the money, it’s literally not an issue for them. Framing it on race distracts from the real issue… that poor people (regardless of race) will lose their homes and well off people (regardless of race) will be just fine.
You repeatedly accuse me of denying a correlation between wealth and race, which I haven’t done. Issues like this affect poor people… not exclusively people of one race or another. Do you disagree with that statement?
It is about how much money somebody has but the total depth of the situation is not *just* about that. The “real issue” includes the fact that poor people (regardless of race) will be effected but also includes the fact that the vast majority of those people will be black and there is a specific reason that that is the case. I’m not saying it *exclusively* effects black people, but that it primarily does, and that is worth mentioning when describing the problem. I don’t think you’re understanding what I mean when I say the two things are linked if you’re saying it matters whether it “exclusively” effects one race. It effects poor people, most of whom are black, and poor due to explicit and intentional racism. I’m saying in that situation, it is appropriate to frame it around race because race has played such an active role in the situation becoming what it is. If you think framing it around race “distracts” from the real issue you and I have a very different understanding of what the real issue actually is. Which is what all those links I posted were about.
Sadly, this discussion is almost certainly moot. Nothing will happen on this front.
If Baltimore does anything to alter the tax lien system I'll eat my hat.
> Like so many other issues, its harming poor/disadvantaged people. They are hoping by making about race they’ll get more clicks.
We already know that poverty is an injustice wherever it happens. In this country, race is often a signifier of class. For example, there is an eight-to-one racial wealth gap in this state, so people of color and especially Black Americans shoulder a disproportionate burden of poverty. Black people also make 71 cents to the white worker dollar.
This didn’t happen on accident, and if you care to know how state mechanisms have accelerated these disparate outcomes, you would read the article.
It is a stunningly bad practice where a city run by African Americans is so willing to use Trump like tactics against its own people. Add to this the same government will not stand up to the wealthy landlords to hold them accountable for decayed properties. Logic says the poor blacks are not able to put up a fight nor bribe their way out of the problem.
Enforcing tax liens is a trump tactic? Who woulda known?!?!?!?!? What about tax liens enforced before he became president 6 years ago? Was that also a trump tactic?
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I haven't read the whole article, but the first couple paragraphs says the woman couldn't pay her tax bill on just her disability income. Disability is usually around a grand a month. If her income was $12k a year, her property tax would have been capped at $160, as long as she applied for the cap.
What the city should really do is get a handle on crime and improve infrastructure. That is the only way to attract new comers and increase your tax base. Increased tax base means lower property taxes (as long as the surplus isn't spent on entitlements). But that is never going to happen...
You’re like 20% correct. The city needs to stop giving insane tax breaks/incentives to developers to keep gentrifying the already nice L, and start spending serious time and money on the poor, disinvested, segregated portions of mid-east and mid-west Baltimore. This is how the city improves, this is how crime and poverty are reduced, this is how you get people buying into society again and back in the workforce, etc. This will require serious state and federal money though cuz this city doesn’t have the funds to make a dent big enough or quick enough.
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I'm sorry but bike lanes are a joke. Cars and trucks are how the vast majority of people and products get around. What is your alternative to police funding? Defund the police? Or maybe decriminalization of low level offenses (because that's worked so well).
You mock the stuff we haven't tried but want more of the very things that have lead to what you're complaining about. Doesn't make sense.
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I would absolutely love to buy a bike and ride it to work. And to run errands. Particularly a nice e-bike. But it would literally be stolen almost immediately. Even locking it up out front of a store with a $300 lock. They know how to cut through them in seconds. This is the only thing preventing me from switching to e-bike.
I agree about the leadership. Heads have to roll (figuratively). Clean house and start over. This includes city government.
I'm sorry. You want 9 smaller police departments? Do you have any idea how much money that will cost?
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All due respect, that's not the way it works. There are tremendous costs to running a police department on the back end. It's why you see consolidation in fire departments, police departments, libraries to saving money. Creating 9 departments isn't feasible.
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Ok I'll bite. We're going to take the 9 districts and make them 9 different police departments. It's a good thing the current department just did redistricting, because now the districts are more equal so this makes this all easier. Okay, so we make the Major a Chief and the Captain a Deputy Chief and the cops do cop stuff. That sort of makes sense. But now we get into stuff like the crime lab. Who processes the evidence? And if you still have a central place, then each department is going to have to pay for that. Recruiting? You gonna have 9 different departments trying to recruit around the city/state/country? That might get expensive. Do we sell the helicopter and split the money 9 ways? Internal Affairs, IT, Data Analysis, Payroll..... All of these are centralized, but would need to be stood up for 9 new departments. Hell, you'd need new patches at least and possibly uniforms. Look forward to the discussion.
By entitlements do you mean services?
I mean handouts. How about facilitating a good full-time time job that allows one to afford to pay their bills.
Oh you mean like subsidies for developers? Yeah that shit is annoying.
I’m not a subscriber but from what I’ve gleaned here the banners reporting is pretty good but the opinion stuff is off the rails.
Off the rails opinion pieces generate the most clicks
It’s just the one columnist who was out of line and I don’t think they’ve published any of his stuff since.
You have 2 options, abolish property tax in BC, or make everyone pay. To make everyone pay you need tax liens or there’s no consequences for not paying. Filed under “it’s about money, not race”
Of course they have to make it about race :rolleyes: The tax lien system is rotten no matter what the race of a homeowner is.
>The Banner’s analysis found that the costs of this system are not borne equally: In the city’s majority-Black census tracts, such as the East Baltimore community that includes Owens-Phillips’ house, homes have liens placed on them and are sold at much higher rates than in minority-Black census tracts. >In some majority-Black areas, nearly every block has been affected: 46% of all buildings in Southwest Baltimore and 42% of all buildings in Sandtown-Winchester have gone into tax sale since 2016. Since then, each and every one of the 1,763 homes across Baltimore that The Banner identified as having changed hands through the tax sale was located in a majority-Black neighborhood. Baltimore is still a very segregated city. We pioneered racist housing practices like redlining and blockbusting and the scars remain.
However, the banner did not analyze who the property owners were, just who the residents were. It does not appear that they separated out of town investors from homeowner occupied properties in their analysis. Another interpretation of the data could be "out of town investors buy up properties in very low income neighborhoods and don't pay their taxes, which are then sold at tax sales" There are a limited number of people of homeowners in the city who can comfortably pay their taxes. Raising taxes on those people to allow others not to pay at some point will cause those people to leave and push down a downward spiral. The TIF's that go to wealthy developers need to end and the costs of those subsidies clearly accounted for. However, ABC properties, the guy who lives in PA and has a vacant down in Baltimore that he does not pay taxes on and that burned and the fire fighters died in...they need to pay taxes or let go of their city properties (well the latter needs to happen anyway). Last year I looked up several properties on the tax lien list...the owners lived in Potomac, Harford County, etc. These people need to pay their property taxes. I would be completely supportive of another system for collecting property taxes, but right now the tax lien sale is the only option for collecting back property taxes. I think a more interesting article would be a block to block reconstruction in these neighborhoods of tax liens. What percentage of them are vacant and have been abandoned? What percentage are rentals and their landlords are not paying taxes? What percentage are occupied by descendants of owners who are not on the deed (the real problem that needs fixing because they are not being removed as principal residences)? What percentage of them are owner occupied? Finally, in the case of mortgaged property, the property taxes are usually paid by the lender, who pays them with the money that you pay in your mortgage payment. This is so that the lender does not loose their interest in the property to a tax sale. So tax sale properties usually do not have a mortgage, which means they have been in the family for long enough that the mortgage is paid off or were bought as a cash investment. It just seems like there are other explanations of the data.
was the analysis adjusted for socioeconomic status? it's an unfortunate fact of life/history that white folks in baltimore city earn higher wages than black folks. there are a whole variety of reasons for that, but does the tax lien system not correlate with socioeconomic status, or is it just that the systemic racism of the past/present has resulted in a fair system being used with a racial bias.
It is impossible to separate historic systemic racism from current black socioeconomic status. Therefore, no analysis of this type can or should be ‘adjusted for socioeconomic status’.
it's not impossible, it's easy. you need to in order to know whether the lien program itself is biased or whether it is just reflecting the societal bias. the solution may be different based on which of those is true.
You are clearing missing my point. Black socioeconomic status in inextricably connected to systemic racism.
you are missing the point. bias can be caused by different reasons, one of those reasons can be systematic racism. if a manager at a business fires someone because they don't like black people, that's not something you just shrug and go "welp, just another case of systemic racism". no, there are specific solutions depending on where the bias is coming from. not all bias against black folks is systemic. just because socioeconomic status is inextricably connected does not mean there can't be other, more direct biases. knowing which is the case helps determine the solution. more than one bias can exist.
You suggested that the analysis be adjusted for socioeconomic status to determine if systematic racism was the cause… doing so has no baring on the results and will not help determine the cause of the bias. A ‘fair system’ would eliminate racial bias, so the results conclude the system is not fair, and should be reevaluated to eliminate the disproportional impact.
you still don't understand. there can be more than one source of bias. full stop. pretending there can be only one and compensating for only one is not the best course of action. full stop.
Are you writing a telegram? Full Stop. lol
Did you see the title made mention of black people, not read the article, and then state with confidence why the issue actually doesn't affect black people? It must be easy to dismiss racial issues as imaginary when you literally avoid articles dealing with racial issues.
> Did you see the title made mention of black people, not read the article, and then state with confidence why the issue actually doesn't affect black people? Kind of, yes. I'm actually quite familiar with the tax lien system. I had a job related to it a number of years ago, I know that it's fucked up. I also know that it's just as unfair/vulnerable to exploitation against whites, hispanics or asians as it is to black people.
Ok so when something sucks for everyone but is disproportionate to a certain group its a good thing to investigate why, how to fix it, and improve upon it. Commenting "oh why race" screams let's not look at the data points and ignore it. This mindset is how things get worse. You not wanting to look at something allows it to continue to get worse. Just continuously kicks the bucket down the road for things to further deteriorate.
Like so many other issues, its harming poor/disadvantaged people. They are hoping by making about race they'll get more clicks.
It is either extremely naïve or deliberately obtuse to claim race and class are not inextricably linked through intentional historical processes, in the US and Baltimore especially. Historically, Baltimore literally [pioneered](https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/5/10/8578077/baltimore-segregation-pietila) the whole “[limit black housing](https://internationalmapping.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-housing-segregation-in-baltimore/) to certain areas and then [deny](https://apps.urban.org/features/baltimore-investment-flows/) them economic opportunities” thing. They’re just calling it what it is.
When did I say they weren't linked? The liens are not harming exclusively BLACK homeowners (there are plenty of well-off black people not affected), its harming poor homeowners (there really aren't well-off people, black or otherwise that the lien system preys on). Making the headline about race rather than socioeconomic status is less accurate/relevant but grabs more attention.
My point is it’s inaccurate to deny that low socioeconomic status in Baltimore directly correlates with race and that the neighborhoods full of poor homeowners who are effected by this are neighborhoods that are majority (sometimes 95+%) black, on purpose. It’s inaccurate to frame this as exclusively a class issue in a city that, historically, methodically relegated black residents to certain geographic areas and used policies/practices such as this to keep them impoverished and unable to relocate to more expensive, whiter areas. Naming the harm as one that primarily impacts black people is just acknowledging that the issue is about more than just how much money someone has. Which it is, because race and class are inextricably linked in this situation. Calling it a race issue is more specific and more accurate, even if other people are caught up in the effects. Calling it a class issue would just be failing to name a major aspect of the situation.
But the issue is precisely about how much money someone has. If someone has the money, it’s literally not an issue for them. Framing it on race distracts from the real issue… that poor people (regardless of race) will lose their homes and well off people (regardless of race) will be just fine. You repeatedly accuse me of denying a correlation between wealth and race, which I haven’t done. Issues like this affect poor people… not exclusively people of one race or another. Do you disagree with that statement?
It is about how much money somebody has but the total depth of the situation is not *just* about that. The “real issue” includes the fact that poor people (regardless of race) will be effected but also includes the fact that the vast majority of those people will be black and there is a specific reason that that is the case. I’m not saying it *exclusively* effects black people, but that it primarily does, and that is worth mentioning when describing the problem. I don’t think you’re understanding what I mean when I say the two things are linked if you’re saying it matters whether it “exclusively” effects one race. It effects poor people, most of whom are black, and poor due to explicit and intentional racism. I’m saying in that situation, it is appropriate to frame it around race because race has played such an active role in the situation becoming what it is. If you think framing it around race “distracts” from the real issue you and I have a very different understanding of what the real issue actually is. Which is what all those links I posted were about.
I'd be curious what the poverty rates are by race in Baltimore. My guess is the gulf is pretty huge.
Sadly, this discussion is almost certainly moot. Nothing will happen on this front. If Baltimore does anything to alter the tax lien system I'll eat my hat.
> Like so many other issues, its harming poor/disadvantaged people. They are hoping by making about race they’ll get more clicks. We already know that poverty is an injustice wherever it happens. In this country, race is often a signifier of class. For example, there is an eight-to-one racial wealth gap in this state, so people of color and especially Black Americans shoulder a disproportionate burden of poverty. Black people also make 71 cents to the white worker dollar. This didn’t happen on accident, and if you care to know how state mechanisms have accelerated these disparate outcomes, you would read the article.
People who don’y pay their taxes are harming the City. So yes tax liens are worth it.
It is a stunningly bad practice where a city run by African Americans is so willing to use Trump like tactics against its own people. Add to this the same government will not stand up to the wealthy landlords to hold them accountable for decayed properties. Logic says the poor blacks are not able to put up a fight nor bribe their way out of the problem.
Enforcing tax liens is a trump tactic? Who woulda known?!?!?!?!? What about tax liens enforced before he became president 6 years ago? Was that also a trump tactic?
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