In 2021, a coalition of homeowners and advocates noticed that Orange County’s tax revaluation had overvalued properties in historically Black neighborhoods, leading to a disproportionate tax increase for those residents. The coalition pushed the county to re-revaluate properties, which found the initial assessment had overvalued properties by more than $10 million.
Now, as the county carries out its 2025 revaluation, that same coalition is once again ringing the alarm.
“Across the county, the historically Black communities are way overvalued compared to other wealthier, historically white neighborhoods, and without market justification,” said Hudson Vaughan, director of the Community Justice Collaborative, in a press conference on Monday.
And this time, said Vaughan, the disparity is even more widespread.
“This is really beyond a few neighborhoods. Orange County’s [revaluation] is way worse than I expected. I thought, especially after the work that folks did with the tax office four years ago, that things would look much better this time around.”
Vaughan shuffled through slides in a depressing “the price is right” game, showing dozens of examples of older and smaller houses that are receiving higher adjustments than their newer and larger counterparts.
The century-old (1,718-square-foot, three-bed, two-bath) family home of the late Marian Cheek Jackson, for instance, was assessed to have a tax value higher than that of a swanky (3,750-square-foot, six-bed, six-and-a-half-bath) 2024 construction in the same neighborhood. A 0.29-acre property with an affordable “tiny home” was assigned a higher land value than a 0.84 parcel with a house that is currently listed for $6.6 million.
It doesn’t quite add up.
“There’s inconsistent and inequitable land valuation in Orange County’s new valuation. There’s an overvaluation of low-price housing and an undervaluation of high-priced housing. And there’s a double standard—similar market increases in white versus Black neighborhoods lead to much higher increased average values in historically Black neighborhoods,” said Vaughan.
He added that part of the problem is that neighborhoods with older houses are more difficult to assess.
“They take more decision-making by the assessment offices because they’re very heterogeneous. Properties are different sizes, different ages, so they have to do a lot more to adjust. It’s not simply like a condominium or town house development.”
The Orange County Property Tax Justice Coalition has a plan. Earlier in the spring, they recruited volunteers to help with the process of fighting for neighborhood-wide revaluations through the proper channels of informal and formal appeals with the tax office.
George Barrett, executive director of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, added that the county should increase funding for antidisplacement initiatives, specifically the longtime homeowners assistance (LHA) program.
In an email to INDY, Orange County community relations director Wil Glenn said that the county “follows a rigorous, data-driven valuation process rooted in state law and appraisal best practices.” The county is already reviewing more than 3,500 appeals, and continues “to welcome more, he said.
“Orange County recognizes and respects the concerns raised by community members about property tax valuations, especially in historically underserved neighborhoods. The county’s priority is ensuring that every property owner feels heard and is treated fairly,” Glenn said.
He also noted that county leadership and representatives of the tax office met with coalition members last month and urged them to submit appeals.
“During that meeting, the county’s tax administrator encouraged appeals for individual properties and stated that if there were entire neighborhoods that have issues, to provide information on those neighborhoods and a way to identify them, and the county would take it to the Board of Equalization and Review to ask if neighborhood wide adjustments should be made similarly to 2021.”
But the appeals process, Barrett said at the press conference, “puts a lot of continued burden on all the folks in these communities to submit these appeals when we know … that there are tools that the office and the county can use to make these neighborhood adjustments and take this on from a systematic level.”
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].