Residents, activists challenge property tax assessments in Orange County

Yahoo

29-05-2025

Photo: Screenshot from online meeting hosted by the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition.
Four years ago, Orange County activists and homeowners successfully challenged what they believed were unfair and inequitable property revaluations in Chapel Hill's historically Black Northside community. Many of those same individuals were shocked in March when new property valuation notices showed what they saw as more of the same across the county.
Last week, the recently formed Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition, shared data from the county's largest historically Black communities that show significant 'vertical regressivity,' meaning newer larger homes in those communities are undervalued while older homes are systematically overvalued.
'Orange County is way worse than I expected,' said Hudson Vaughan, director of the Community Justice Collaborative at the North Carolina Housing Coalition. 'I thought, especially after the work that folks did with the tax office four years ago, that things would look much better this time around.'
In 2021, activists in the Northside community found that property tax assessments of many new, larger student housing properties in Chapel Hill were lower than those of smaller homes owned by Black residents. According to Vaughan this is a common problem. He noted that in many established Black communities across the nation, homes are often undervalued for resale, bank loans and equity purposes, but over-assessed for property tax purposes.
Speaking at a recent virtual meeting held via Zoom, Vaughan said, 'I think what you'll see is that some of the student rentals in Northside got valued a little higher [in the recent revaluation], but across the county, the historically Black communities are way overvalued compared to other wealthier, historically white neighborhoods and without market justification.' Vaughan resides in the Northside neighborhood and helped lead the effort to bring fairness to tax assessments in 2021.
Northside residents' efforts in 2021 eventually resulted in about a $7 million reduction in assessed home values. Meanwhile, under-assessed rental properties saw assessment increases of $5 million to $6 million.
Vaughan recently led property tax assessments examinations across the Research Triangle. He said several neighborhoods in Wake County and Durham have real problems. Throughout North Carolina, Vaughan said, many homeowners in the lowest price housing are affected. In some counties, he said, they are paying proportionally twice the property taxes of owners of the highest price housing.
'And yet, even though that's the case, over four times as many high-income owners, primarily from white census tracts, appeal their tax values for being too high,' he said.
Vaughan shared an example from the current revaluation in Chapel Hill's Northside community: On one side of the street, a home owned by a Black resident for more than 50 years that is 1,200 square-feet and more than 100 years old is valued at a higher rate for property taxes than investor-owned property directly across the street. The investor's property has a duplex with a detached home behind it. Together, the investor-owned property contains at least eight bedrooms and totals 2,900 square feet. The smaller home's taxable value is $656,00 compared to $652,000 for the larger duplex and detached home across the street.
'The homeowner on the left [the Black homeowner] will end up paying higher property taxes as a result of this valuation,' Vaughan said.
He projects a $2 million total increase in property taxes for the historically Black neighborhoods he and other advocates have looked at, even if the county adopts a revenue neutral tax rate.
'We've already heard Orange County and Chapel Hill and Carrboro talk about how they're going to have to raise taxes, likely this year for very good reason, and we are in support of that, but it cannot be on the backs of the historically Black neighborhoods,' Vaughan said.
County tax administrator Nancy Freeman said her office explained to Vaughan and the coalition that when issues are found to be prevalent throughout several properties in appeals, that information can be taken to the Board of Equalization and Review for its consideration.
'We can show them that we see there is a problem with all of these properties, or there could be problems with all of these properties that are still under appeal, and we would like for you [the Board of Equalization and Review] to direct us to review this property or this neighborhood again,' Freeman said. 'That's how we would be able to go back and review the property and make adjustments, if needed, and make corrections to all affected properties in that neighborhood.'
After a preliminary review of the information provided by Vaughan and the coalition, however, Freeman said her office isn't seeing any 'prevailing issues' with properties it has been able to identify and review.
'That's not to say there are not problems within that need some attention but at this moment we've not completed a review and at this moment, the ones that we've looked at, there's nothing that's prevalent from all of them at this point,' Freeman said.
So far, Freeman said there have been 3,500 informal property valuation appeals, with more than 200 formal appeals, which are made to the Board of Equalization and Review after an informal review of a property's tax value.
'We suspect we might get another 500 [formal appeals] before the end of July [when the appeal filing deadline closes],' Freeman said.
The virtual meeting at which Vaughan held forth was hosted by the Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition. The coalition is made up of community organizers from historically Black neighborhoods across Orange County including Councilville, Mars Hill, Fairview, Rogers Road, Piney Grove, Efland-Cheeks, Cedar Grove, Northside, Pine Knolls, Tin Top, and Glosson/Davie Rd.
The effort is supported by The Marian Cheek Jackson Center, the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association, Justice United, Habitat for Humanity, and The Community Justice Collaborative of the NC Housing Coalition.
'These historically Black neighborhoods are some of the most historic, culturally diverse, and, you know, are the spaces of remaining affordability within the county,' said George Barrett, a former Northside resident and executive director of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center.
'Our neighborhoods and our communities hold so much history and so much connection and love and spirit,' Barrett said. 'Our communities and our neighborhoods are…the ones who are facing an intense amount of threat by these new revaluations. In these existing hubs of the Black community within Orange County…we, as a coalition…have formed to fight back against this and really preserve the future of our neighborhoods in the midst of these current revaluations'
Horace Johnson Jr., the son and namesake of Hillsborough's first and only Black mayor who recently died, warned those on the Zoom call that he would be blunt in his assessment of the revaluation.
'This is extinction level gentrification,' Johnson said.
He called the assessments 'mind numbing,' a phrase he said he reserves for things that cannot be reasonably explained.
Johnson said Hillsborough leaders are using high taxes to turn the town into an 'OAW' community.
'OAW represents old and white, specifically for Hillsborough, a town that's rich in tradition,' Johnson said. 'I've been here all my life. They're trying to turn this community to old and white, which brings it back to class, the have and the have nots.'
Johnson said his late father would not want him to just 'weep and mourn.' He'd want him to continue to fight against injustice.
Retired District Court Judge Beverly Scarlett joined the meeting and said high property taxes can make owning a home unaffordable for vulnerable populations such as the elderly, who might be forced to put off buying medication to pay bills.
'I've seen this within my own family, [where someone] will decide 'I'm not going to buy my medication because I need to put together money, put my pennies together to be able to pay these taxes' — that's going to lead to negative health outcomes,' Scarlett said.
Vaughan said the good news is that tax offices can make neighborhood adjustments, and many other counties have.
'Guilford County adjusted land values in a historically Black neighborhood when they realized the land values were wrong,' he said. 'Wake County is currently looking at two neighborhoods that had much more complicated differences and yet were problematic for a lot of the long standing historically Black residents.'
Durham is also looking at systematic tools, and all of the counties have access to the regressivity tools that Vaughan shared. 'Orange County decided not to use the tool this time and made huge mistakes,' Vaughan said.
Barrett said more than 100 residents from across the county have signed a letter to county commissioners asking for fairness and justice on property tax assessments.
'We want to see these neighborhood wide adjustments in historically Black and Brown neighborhoods be made and we want to also have a revisitation of undervalued, wealthier neighborhoods,' Barrett said. 'Investor-owned buildings should carry their fair share of the property tax burden.'