After nearly four years, a group of Black Cincinnati residents and the city’s officials have settled a federal lawsuit in which the residents accused the Ohio city of intentionally favoring white homeowners through the way it operated its residential tax abatement program.
The lawsuit filed in July 2020 claimed the city operated the program in a “racially discriminatory way” that worsened Cincinnati’s racially segregated residency pattern.
The recent settlement will allow the program to continue, provided that city officials make efforts to increase the number of Black residents participating, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
The Cincinnati Tax Abatement Program, administered by the city’s Department of Community and Economic Development, was designed to allow property owners to apply “to pay property taxes on the pre-improvement value of their property for 10-15 years,” the lawsuit stated.
The program required a minimum of $5,000 in renovation costs to be eligible for the tax reduction, and the lawsuit claimed that this disqualified lower-income homeowners who wanted to make modest renovations totaling less than that.
“Nowhere in the application or approval process is there any consideration by the City of Cincinnati of the degree to which the granting of tax abatements will have a racially segregative effect on the residency pattern” in the city, the lawsuit said.
The city is made up of 50.4 percent white residents and 39.6 percent Black residents, according to 2022 United States Census Bureau data.
The suit also claimed the program made Black residents poorer as it favored white homeowners applying for tax breaks to offset home repairs, the Enquirer reported. According to the news outlet, although the city overhauled the program last year, Black homeowners involved in the suit still accused the new system of discrimination.
City records showed that Cincinnati granted 2,640 residential tax abatements for $183…
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