Why is City of Baltimore stealing houses from Black residents?

Anonymous wrote:I know Baltimore pretty well. It's a black-run city, meaning the government and bureaucracy are almost entirely black. It's been like that since the 1970s. So it's hard to argue black residents were singled out based on race.

I don't know all the ins and outs of the case but I'm aware that for arrears, it's not just a case of paying back the owed taxes but you also pay interest and penalties, which can be quite stiff and quickly accumulate. The reason for why penalties exist is because it's to prevent people from playing games with taxes, deciding we'll pay taxes this year but skip next year as long as we catch up the following year. You can sort of do that with the city water bills but they're not letting anyone do that with property taxes and for good reasons!

I also don't doubt some people will try to play the data game to distort pictures. Saying black residents pay more for property taxes than whites with comparably valued houses is problematic because black and white Baltimoreans are largely apples and oranges. There's a huge poorer / working class black population but very few whites in that category because they all live in West Virginia now. I can easily see a situation where a lower educated poorer homeowner fails to take advantage of homestead tax credits while the city's white population, more affluent and higher educated, takes full advantage of it, and presto, you get "unequal" taxation despite that the homestead tax credit itself is hardly race-based.

1. Historical disinvestment in Black communities due to racist policies like redlining means jurisdictions with large Black communities have smaller tax bases and have to levy higher tax rates

2. Maryland is famously bad at property tax assessments. Unlike most states where property tax assessments are done at the local level, in Maryland the state government conducts tax assessments. The assessors are horrifically underpaid, especially in wealthy areas like Montgomery County. Montgomery County properties have been chronically under assessed for many years. I don't know about other counties but most likely MoCo, the wealthiest and highest cost area, is the most underassessed due to the cost of living disparity. Under Maryland's processes taxpayers have zero recourse if their property is correctly assessed while other properties are underassessed, causing them to pay a higher rate on their actual property value than others

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08/16/2025 18:49

Subject: Why is City of Baltimore stealing houses from Black residents?

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Anonymous

People forget that racism is primarily defined by racial advantage for White people. So don't think about Black politicians unfairly treating Black residents. Think about a system that causes predominantly White owned neighborhoods to be underassessed.