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© 2021 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)
By Marshall Collins
Recently, the Board of Alderman shared their tax classification report for the upcoming fiscal year, and one thing is clear: we sorely need more commercial businesses in Somerville to help reduce the tax burden on residents.
Somerville resident property owners will pay 76 percent of the city’s taxes, which is up from 75 percent this year. By comparison, businesses property taxes make up less than 17 percent of the total. Residential assessments increased across the board this past year, and in the case of triple-deckers, assessed value increased by more than 20 percent. In the words of City Assessor Francis Golden: “In all my years … I haven’t seen … a jump [like this].”
Business properties pay a much higher rate of taxes than residents do, so why the difference? The problem in Somerville is a lack of businesses currently contributing. Just a block or two away, there is a vastly different dynamic. In Cambridge, businesses pay more than 60 percent of the total tax burden. Why? Because there are many more commercial properties in Cambridge.
City Hall has been working to encourage commercial development. The Green Line Extension will help spur development along the line, and overhauling zoning to include a commercial-only zoning district will also help facilitate development. But relief from these initiatives is years down road.
Fortunately, there are options on the table that could jumpstart the commercial market in Somerville. USQ, the revitalization planned for Union Square, includes a 175,000 square foot commercial building in its first phase. If the city moves forward with this project, a groundbreaking would take place next year and residents would feel the impact almost immediately, as payments for the land and permits would start pouring in. In the long term, the first commercial building would start to shift the tax burden from Somerville residents almost exclusively, to something far more equitable.
As he stated at the Board of Aldermen’s most recent hearing on property taxes, “The only way we can help our constituents, or the honorable board can help your constituents, is if the CIP% (commercial industrial and personal property) of the levy grows. It’s the only way …. you can pass more value onto them.”
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your telling me with the amount of condos and new residential that has gone up isn’t enough to reduce the taxes for owners. City is getting greedy at this point. every single inch of this city is condos. Every available parking lot is being turned into residential but yet taxes keep going up. its not that hard to figure this issue out. former resident who was pushed out because it has gotten so bad for owners.
Part of the problem is that the main business focus seems to be property development, and not commercial businesses. We need to encourage more actual businesses to come to Somerville instead of more residential properties being flippped and converted.
It just isn’t fair to single-family homeowners like me who are struggling to maintain our limited incomes and are forced to deal with rising property taxes. We don’t make any income from our homes the way landlords do with multi-family homes. Why aren’t our residential exemptions higher than theirs?
I don’t like the idea of renters getting hit with increases to make up the difference, but at the same time, landlords are making money from their properties, so they can handle the increases. But those of us who are lucky enough to have managed to get a single-family home to live in as we get older are then faced with the burden of trying to keep up with the costs of having the property in the first place, even if that property is fully paid for.
It’s telling when the land value is greater than the actual house that sits on it. The City owns the land. They are our landlords, and when they have rising costs, like any landlord, they pass it on to their tenants.
Perhaps if more actual commercial properties were encouraged over residential property development, those increases could be passed on to them, giving residents a break.
But then, when have we EVER really seen a break due to anything here? We’re always told that if we allow things in, it will lower the cost to us. But I have yet to ever see that to be the case. The more money the City gets, the more they want to keep it.
So, in the end, I guess we might have to either pay up or leave. I hope I won’t be forced to do the latter. My home would then likely be snapped up, converted, and made into condos. Single-family homes in Somerville are an endangered species these days.
Anyone who thinks stopping residential development will stop properties from increasing in price would do well to look to the Bay area, home of the two million dollar ‘starter home’. If you add exclusively commercial, you run the risk of going Palo Alto.
While I understand from a budgetary perspective the desire for more commercial properties, it’s critical to balance it with additional housing. Cambridge’s budgetary windfall has come at the expense of its most vulnerable citizens – the city has added thousands of new jobs and nowhere near that in housing, which is a formula for rent spikes.
In a perfect world, we’d move away from this odd model where every city wants jobs, but they’d much prefer you go somewhere else after 5 PM.
Residential properties are net fiscal losers. A 2017 fiscal impact analysis commissioned by the city found that after subtracting the cost of municipal services that the city provides from the taxes paid by residential properties, the average housing unit in a residential neighborhood loses the city $840 per year.
A “mixed-use residential” property (think Assembly Square) nets the city $337. The main difference between the two is that the analysts assumed that their would be only one school-age child in every thirteen “mixed-use” units. They took a marginal-cost approach to their analysis. An average-cost approach would wipe out any net gain from residential properties.
So building new housing means choosing between childless units, which increase transiency and further unravel the fabric of our community, or neighborhood units, which substantially deepen our structural fiscal deficit.
The notion that building more units in New England’s densest city would lower price is crackpot economics, because the housing market is regional. And regionally, we’re about a half million units down. Any fool can see that the infrastructure built to support a 19th Century streetcar suburb isn’t up to the congestion we already have.
Only massive commercial development can save homeowners from onerous tax increases.
Start charging $2000 a month to every property that is breaking the no more than 4 rule. Landlords will still be making money and the city will get a ton of new revenue.
Too many people like DatGruntled and LindaS believe that multi family landlords are riding around in cadillacs and lighting cigars with $100 bills. I’m a owner occupied landlord and I don’t make any money on my house. I used to raise rent when my taxes went up now they’ve gone up so much I can’t even raise the rent enough to cover my monthly nut (mortgage/insurance/taxes) on the house.
I own and pay real estate taxes in Somerville. Paying real estate taxes is one of the costs and responsibilities of owning a home. If you cannot afford to pay or think it’s too expensive, then sell and downsize. There is no such thing as a free lunch. I have paid RE taxes in a lot of towns, and frankly, the Somerville exemption for homeowners is very generous. Probably too generous. It’s typical of what’s going on – everyone wants the city to do this and that and the other thing, but nobody wants to pay for it! Grow up.
Fredd, having been here for decades, I know a lot of landlords who are just getting by and I do not see how my proposal would affect them at all. I also have several houses around me that were bought by absentee landlords who turned every room into a bedroom and have 6-8 people per unit, which more or less doubled the population of the block over night and turned parking from reasonable to impossible. I have no problem proposing that these land lords who are getting from $5-8K per unit be taxed at a much higher rate than those that are following the rules.
Magic Mike, what exactly does the city do for us for the ever increasing taxes they extort? And what are we demanding they do? Whatever they attempt to do they a horrible job at and I’ve not asked them for anything except to stay out of my business and wallet. They do a crappy job at that. You want to pay more in taxes then man-up and walk down to city hall and write a check. In the meantime, STFU.
Now why don’t you go back into your safe space with your other beta males and discuss your white privilege.
Gilets.
Not that I enjoy paying taxes, but Somerville has the lowest residential taxes of any of our neighbors and I would say we get a lot of value out of that.
We have some of the cleanest and best maintained streets (relative to our neighbors) and the snow clearing is also better than average. Try to park in any square in Cambridge or Medford a week after a snow storm. We have one of the safest cities and a great police force.
There are also more outreach meetings run by our city than just about anywhere else. So you can talk to elected officials and city employees regularly in open meetings if you have issues.
Most of my friends in the metro area outside of Somerville pay 50-100% more in property tax than I do on houses that would sell for 15-40% less than mine would. Most of them are impressed with how quickly Somerville fixes a broken street light or repairs a pot hole compared to their towns.
BMAC, hmmm….lowest residential taxes of any of our neighbors???
Cambridge, MA Residential Property Tax Rate for 2018. For fiscal year 2018, the residential tax rate in Cambridge, MA is $6.29 per $1,000 of assessed value.
Somerville, MA Residential Property Tax Rate for 2018. For 2018, the residential tax rate in Somerville, MA is $11.32 per $1,000 of assessed value.
Ladies and gents. I think we need to focus on how and why the costs the city is bearing and their expenses are growing faster than inflation, never mind or assessments. We need to demand accountability and measurement when our city officials spend our tax money to ensure that we are being effective.
Yikes, that is why I did not say rate. With a residential exemption I am paying less than someone in a similar house in Cambridge. Of course their house is valued about twice what mine is.
“We have some of the cleanest and best maintained streets (relative to our neighbors) and the snow clearing is also better than average.”
That one made me laugh the #### out loud. Well done.