Older residents struggle to pay soaring property taxes

As property values rise in Franklin County’s hot housing market, the older adult population is increasingly at a financial crossroads.

While Franklin County older adults are more likely to own a home, rising property values and taxes pose a financial challenge as they try to age in place.

The auditor’s office in partnership with the Agefriendly Innovation Center has released a report entitled Older Adults and Property Taxes examining the burdens faced by older homeowners who have to pay ever-increasing property taxes.

This report was based on robust community-engagement with older homeowners, renters, and working professionals in a housing or aging related position. The report documented many challenges faced by older adults.

For instance, data shows more people are aging with mortgages, with more debt and less savings than previous generations, and many older homeowners rely on Social Security for their income, which hasn’t kept pace with housing and cost of living increases.

Among those 65 and older in Franklin County, 23% of owner-occupied households and 57% of renter occupied households are housing cost-burdened. These concerns are serious and during our research were made ever more clear when talking to community members.

While the report quantified the challenges, it also made several recommendations to help older homeowners. Current programs like the Homestead Exemption, Franklin County’s Property Tax Assistance Program, and the Franklin County treasurer’s Budget Payment Plan are important and critical to older adults in Franklin County.

However, given the growth of the older adult population and rising financial pressures, these programs may not be able to keep pace with the growing demand for support.

The auditor’s office has been advocating for increasing the income requirement for the Homestead Exemption to $50,000, increasing the property value that is exempted up to $31,200, and indexing the value for inflation. These changes would make the exemption far more useful for many older homeowners.

The office also supports another of the report’s recommendations, to update the Property Tax Assistance Program with an online application and increased funding to help it support more older homeowners. Additionally, the auditor’s office supports creating a new program, the Franklin County Property Tax Relief Program, which would offer financial help when property taxes exceed a certain percentage of an older homeowner’s income.

Looking ahead, the report also recommends further investigation into how to support older renters, among other areas.

We invite you to review the report and let us know how you would like to participate in the commonsense solutions outlined. This work will take all of us and we hope to hear from residents, professionals, and advocates about how we can accomplish these solutions together.

Michael Stinziano is Franklin County auditor. Katie White is director of the Age-friendly Innovation Center.