Tanya Todd stands on the front porch of her North Homewood house in the spring rain. Two years ago that would’ve meant sewer backups and property tax bills. (Photo by Benjamin Brady/PublicSource)
With a community group’s help, a Homewood woman got her tax bill down to almost nothing — but the help she got isn’t available everywhere.
by Rich Lord, PublicSource
Twice Tanya Todd considered giving up the North Homewood house that’s been in her family since before she was born.
More than a decade ago, an attorney advising her on overdue property taxes told her “just stay there until you’re put out,” she recounted. “I didn’t feel comfortable with that,” so she started paying the taxes as best she could.
Then, around 2017, she and her neighbors began enduring sewer backups. She considered retreating to a high-rise.
“I decided to stay and fight,” she said. “I’m really easy to get along with, but I’m like Popeye sometimes.”
Tanya Todd sits in the living room of her house in North Homewood. Back taxes and sewer backups have sometimes made it difficult to stay in the home she’s known all her life. (Photo by Benjamin Brady/PublicSource)
She got help from Operation Better Block [OBB], a Homewood-focused revitalization agency, and became one of the rare homeowners to challenge the assessment system. She came out of it with a clean basement and tax bill that’s cheaper than dinner for two.
It’s relatively unusual for homeowners to appeal their property tax assessments. From 2015 through 2021, there were more than 49,000 assessment appeals filed on residential properties in Allegheny County — but just 15,000 of them were filed by residential property owners. That’s in a county with some 350,000 owner-occupied homes. Around 60% of the residential property owners who appealed ultimately had their assessments reduced.