Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and members of Metro Council have proposed amending the city’s property tax moratorium program to avoid the displacement of residents in high-growth neighborhoods.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and members of Metro Council have proposed amending the city’s property tax moratorium program to avoid the displacement of residents in high-growth neighborhoods.
The tax moratorium program was created in 1983 as a means to encourage both commercial and residential property owners to make improvements to properties that are 25 years old or older. If the property owner qualifies, their Metro Government and Urban Services District taxes are frozen for five years.
The changes proposed to the program would lower the amount of money property owners must spend on home improvements in West Louisville, Shelby Park and Smoketown to qualify for the program, according to a news release. Both Shelby Park and Smoketown are set to be reassessed by the Jefferson County Property Valuation Administrator’s Office later this year.
“The goal is to avoid the displacement that can occur when a neighborhood sees such quick investment that property values rise markedly, which in turn can raise property taxes beyond what current residents can afford and put pressure on existing homeowners to sell,” the news release said.
The proposal would qualify homeowners for the tax moratorium program if their home improvements equal at least five percent of the home’s value based on the latest PVA assessment, according to the release. As an example, the average home value in Russell is $36,717, so a homeowner would need to spend at least $1,836 on upgrades in order to qualify.
The program is paired with other anti-displacement measures, such as the Russell Homeowner Repair Program, which offers funding assistance for Russell homeowners to make home repairs, and a down payment assistance program, which helps provide qualifying homebuyers with funding to purchase Jefferson County homes.
“We are seeing significant reinvestment in some of these neighborhoods, and we want to be sure that the people who live in these communities, the people who are the soul of these communities, can stay and grow with these communities,” Fischer said in the release.
The release said other properties outside of these designated areas may be eligible for the program if the home improvement costs are at least 10 percent of the value of the improvements. In that case, the property must be in a census tract where at least 50 percent of household incomes are less than 60 percent of the area median income, the release said.
“New investment is good and necessary to stabilize neighborhoods, but an important piece must be to offer protection to current, longtime homeowners who are the heart and soul of these urban neighborhoods and the households that are the most financially fragile and at risk,” Jefferson County Property Valuations Administrator Colleen Younger said in the release. “Property values in west Louisville neighborhoods rose for the first time in eight years during the 2019 assessment, and this program will offer some protection as property taxes rise due to fast growth in the target areas.”
