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Snitches get stitches, so I’ve heard. But, I’m deliberating over whether I should start snitchin’ about the vacant properties I see on my block. Recently, I wrote about how the DC Office of Tax and Revenue sent me a heinous property tax bill for triple what it should be, due to the madness of DC’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs listing my very much inhabited, lived-in house as vacant. I’m still ticked! Even though the people at either office were rude and unhelpful, I’ve been led to believe that the situation has been corrected. That didn’t prevent me from firing off some e-mails and letters, including to Mayor Adrian Fenty (it was cathartic). But, what really, REALLY irked me is that there are about three or four shabby vacant properties on the block, and if you looked them up in the DC property database, they are listed as residential and receiving the homestead deduction. But, my newly painted home, with a neat yard, etc. is the vacant one?! No no, it is not going to work like that, my friends. All I can say is that the assessor who came around and determined that mine was the vacant property is a fool.
With the irony that I’ve been hearing that District is supposed to be getting strict about vacant properties and taxing them at the much higher rate of $5 per every $100 of its assessed value, I headed to the DCRA website and printed out enough forms to report the known vacant properties on my block. I have been kind of gung-ho about this, seeing as I hate shabby homes. Vacant properties attract litter, crime, possible squatters, and, yes, they lower property values. One of the owners is very absentee. I’ve seen him only a couple of times since I moved here, and I do not care for him. The other chap capitalized on the neighborhood’s war zone MLK riot aftermath and bought up several properties in the area; I admire his foresight, but you can’t paint your houses or trim the bushes? I wish they had sold during the real estate boom years, what they were holding on to those houses for, I don’t know, other than uninformed greed perhaps. Shoot, they missed their chances to make top dollar.
Anyway, I got cold feet about reporting them. The man with the multiple properties is annoying, but he’s kind of nice…sometimes. And, I honestly, don’t want to see anyone pay an arm and a leg in property taxes. I really just want them to fix up their properties, so they won’t look, um, vacant. Slap some paint on those suckers. Fix the mail box (empty the boxes, too). Pick up the trash. If that is too much to ask, be humble and sell your homes to people who will value them more and take care of them.
I’m undecided. Any suggestions? What would you do? I don’t have as much of a problem reporting the totally absent, unfriendly guy. Or, should I be naive enough to believe that they’ll both register as vacant property owners? Sheesh, I just want this block to get to where it could be, and these jokers are holding it back (them and the rowdy bunch in another house). Well, I’ll keep on deliberating. For more info on vacant properties in DC, click below: (more…)