Since 2014 property tax assessments were made public a week ago, several media sources (us included) have worked hard to evaluate the credibility and reliability of the new assessments. This task is made far more challenging by the fact that the Office of Property Assessment is only releasing limited data, refusing to compile all of the data on a single disk. Nevertheless, we’ve been doing our best and have come up with some interesting findings thus far.

Today’s It’s Our Money wonders why many properties have been assessed at higher or lower number than they’ve recently sold for. Take two properties on the 2000 block of Pemberton Street for example:

21st and Pemberton

2017 Pemberton St. was purchased in May of 2010 for $379K, but has been assessed at $290,300. It has about 1,150 sqft of living…

If you’re nuts about planning and/or development, you surely followed the process over the last few years that resulted in the establishment of a new zoning code last summer. Thankfully, our city leaders have had the wisdom and foresight to make some rapid amendments to the brand new zoning code, graciously ignoring their own directive to give the new code a year to work itself out before making any changes. Our favorite change to the new zoning code comes from 3rd district councilwoman Jannie Blackwell.

City Hall will protect us!

Under the new code, neighborhood groups had been required to file for something called “RCO (Registered Community Organization) status.” And oh man, the requirements! RCOs were obligated to fulfill extremely onerous conditions, like holding regular public meetings, choosing leaders through elections, and having a stated mission that involves some aspect of land use. Can you imagine?…

Last summer, the City of Philadelphia dodged a bullet when the Mayor Nutter’s aggressive effort to pass AVI was rebuffed by City Council. But this fortunate turn of events did not solve the problem, it simply kicked the can down the road to 2014. And with news that next year’s assessments will be sent out in the middle of February, homeowners are again beginning to feel that sense of dread that their property taxes are about to skyrocket. And many of them are right to feel that way, because that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Some Fishtowners will see taxes go way up, others won't

One piece of good news, which really drives home the point that waiting was the right move, is that the expected tax rate being discussed is 1.3%, down from a rate of 1.8% that was bandied about last…

At the end of August, years of intense effort, healthy debate, and deep thought were rewarded when Philadelphia’s first new zoning code in decades officially became the law of the land. Now here we sit, just three months later, and some members of City Council are attempting to unravel certain aspects of this carefully crafted and endlessly vetted new code before giving it the time it needs to spread its proverbial wings.

Trouble at City Hall

Yesterday, an exhausting meeting of the City Council’s Committee of the Rules resulted in support of a poorly conceived and ill-advised reduction in the threshold for registered community organizations to influence the zoning process, and the tabling of a measure to haphazardly alter two of the new zoning districts delineated in the new code. While we’re concerned that fringe community groups…

A few weeks ago, we told you that the PRA Land Grab (for more info on this, click here) would be coming before the Rules Committee of City Council and encouraged you to go out and make your voice heard. The hearing featured a parade of affordable housing developers touting the importance of affordable housing and featured only one person testifying in dissent. The favorable vote seemed like a mere formality.

Cmte of the Rules

The principal question that remains unanswered is why the City can’t simply build affordable housing on lots it already owns and instead is using powers of eminent domain to seize privately owned lots. While it’s great that many parcels have been removed from the original list, that any private land will be taken for affordable housing, to be constructed at some indeterminate future time when funding…

The hits just keep on coming from the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority.

Today, we’d like to share a plan from the PRA to condemn and seize forty-three properties via eminent domain in the Point Breeze neighborhood. This list was finalized at the PRA’s July meeting, and has an acquisition budget of nearly $1.7M. Twelve of the parcels are already owned by City agencies, and the other thirty-one are owned privately, by individuals and developers. Several of these were purchased as recently as a few months ago.

Remarkably, after the acquisition of these properties, the PRA has no concrete plans for next steps. According to a quote from Councilman Kenyatta Johnson’s Chief of Staff Chris Sample to Next American City, the plan is to use about 40% of the properties for new construction affordable housing and 60% for market-rate housing. But there’s…