Opinion: Racial segregation could soon be official city policy

Robert Newman
·2 min read
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Reggie Harris, Cincinnati City Councilman, makes a comment during the budget and finance committee meeting, Monday, March 14, 2022. They were discussing a $9 million project in Oakley that had been in the works for nine months. Ultimately, the council did not approve the proposed eight-year tax abatement. The developer is Chris Hildebrant, CEO of the Morelia Group. Harris was against the abatement.

The tax abatement “reforms” that are now on the table at City Hall are a mask to protect and enhance our racially segregated residency pattern in Cincinnati. If passed by City Council in its present form,  racial segregation, in housing will be the official policy of the city. Here is how it will happen.

The Eastern Caucasian neighborhoods, including Hyde Park, have benefitted to an extraordinary degree by the number of tax abatements and their values. According to the HR&A Advisors, the city’s consultant for tax abatements, "The neighborhoods with the highest home values [the Hyde Park neighborhoods] received over 100 times the level of tax incentives than those with the lowest home values." Another conclusion by HR&A is that "neighborhoods with a higher percentage of white residents have seen tax incentives over 7 times higher than neighborhoods with non-white residents. And finally, HR&A found that property values increased in the Eastern Caucasian neighborhoods from 2010 to the present in a range of plus 35.7% to 126.8%.

These neighborhoods received 1,219 abatements which fueled the increase in property values − while property values in the predominantly African American neighborhoods which received 229 abatements lost value from minus 43% to plus 14.3%.

An opposing view:New tax abatement program to benefit all neighborhoods

To give a specific profile of how property values are changing − according to the Hamilton County Auditor's office, a typical house in Hyde Park on Mooney Avenue had an assessed value of $211,800 in 1996.  In 2020, the assessed value of such a home was $658,070. By contrast, a typical house in Roselawn on Wynnewood Lane had an assessed value of $49,900 in 1996, and in 2020, the assessed value was $46,710.

These proportions of tax abatements and property values in the coming years will only worsen under the present proposal because there is no limit to the number of tax abatements for the Hyde Park neighborhoods, and the maximum amount for each tax abatement with all the environmental incentives is $600,000.  Since the vast majority of the tax abatements in these neighborhoods is substantially less than this maximum, it is probable that the rate of tax abatements will continue long into the future. That rate is 18 times the number of tax abatements in the African American neighborhoods.

Nor is there any real expectation that there will be any great surge tax abatements and development in predominately African American neighborhoods in the absence of incentives for development, no interest loans, and a change in the definitions of "improvements" that would qualify for tax abatements.

Is that the city we want?

Robert Newman, a Cincinnati attorney, lives in Hyde Park.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Racial segregation could soon be official city policy