City is perfect storm for higher rents

The Sunday Dispatch. com article “Income divide and rising rents make more neighborhoods unaffordable,” exposed a real problem for the city of Columbus. Downtown and near Downtown rents are becoming unaffordable for many low- and middle-income working families. One reason not mentioned in the article was rising property taxes.

The Columbus School Board has hired a law firm to scour the real-estate transactions looking for multifamily dwellings that sell for more than the assessed valuation for tax purposes. When identified, the new owner is forced before the Franklin County Board of Revision to raise the property value to the purchase price, thereby increasing property taxes collected by the school district.

I had the misfortune of being one of those people last year. I told the members of the board that their action served only to make Downtown living cost-prohibitive for lower-income people because any property-tax increase for a landlord must be passed onto the tenant in the form of higher rent. Add to that the 19 percent property-tax increase passed by voters in November that is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2016, and the planned revaluation of all property citywide every three years that will take place in 2017 and one can look forward to even higher rents.

My property taxes have increased 86 percent in the past 12 months. Guess who pays that tax increase? Guess who can’t find affordable housing Downtown?

Stephen Sales Columbus