Action Tank Report

City of Cincinnati Residential Tax Abatement Program 

Preliminary Findings

October 26, 2020

Intro

Action Tank is nearing completion of phase 1 of a research project focused on the City of Cincinnati’s Residential Tax Abatement program. Although Action Tank’s research is ongoing, we release these preliminary findings to inform current public discussions related to the program. 

Method

Action Tank downloaded the Residential Tax Abatement data from the City’s website in August 2020, and used the listed addresses to identify abated properties. Action Tank then pulled property information from the Hamilton County Auditor Property Search website and race data from the 2010 Cincinnati Statistical Neighborhood Approximations on the City’s website.

Note: the City removed its Residential Tax Abatement data in late August or early September 2020, and according to the City’s website, it is still currently reviewing and validating its data.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1: City should expedite its quality control review of the data and make it publicly available on CincyInsights to ensure transparency and integrity of its residential tax abatement program. 

Recommendation 2: Action Tank joins several Council Members and many housing experts who have already recommended that the City modify tax abatement incentives to more directly support Black homeowners, and homeowners in neighborhoods experiencing weak housing market performance that include a significant number of Black households. Action Tank’s final report will include a more detailed recommendation based on our more detailed findings.

Recommendation 3: Create an independent transparent monitoring process by a third party to ensure that the City’s program is hitting its targets and having the intended effect. Action Tank’s final report will include a more detailed recommendation of what data points to monitor and specific benchmarks based on our more detailed findings.

Findings

There are some observable inequities across neighborhoods, with tax abatements appearing to be granted to homeowners in predominantly white neighborhoods more often than to homeowners in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

The City’s Residential Tax Abatement dataset only had entries dating back to 2012 and had 3339 addresses listed -- Action Tank identified that 1,142 addresses were either unidentified addresses, duplicates, were not listed on the Auditor’s website, were residences outside of Cincinnati, appeared to be office addresses rather than the abated property addresses, or did not have enough information listed to identify the abated unit (for example, some multifamily building addresses were listed without specifying the unit number).

Please find the attached appendix detailing the following by neighborhood:

• Neighborhood: from the addresses Department of Community and Economic Development neighborhood designation in the City’s Residential Tax Abatement dataset

• Number of Abatements: from the addresses Department of Community and Economic Development neighborhood designation in the City’s Residential Tax Abatement dataset

• Assessed Value of Abated Properties: from the data collected via the Hamilton County Auditor Property Search website

• Abated Value of Abated Properties: from the data collected via the Hamilton County Auditor Property Search website

• Taxes Paid by Abated Properties: from the data collected via the Hamilton County Auditor Property Search website 

• Racial Composition of Neighborhood: from the City’s 2010 Cincinnati Statistical Neighborhood Approximations

  • Percents given for Black Only, White Only, and Other (Asian, Hispanic, Native American, Two or more races, Other)

Some next steps include verifying the City’s neighborhood designations, investigating the addresses that did not have enough information to identify the abated unit, and further analyzing the relationship of race and the abatement data.

As we continue to verify the abatement data and if the City releases an updated list of abated addresses, there may be a slight impact to the distribution of abatements in our appendix across neighborhoods.

Future Research & Final Report 

The remainder of this project will incorporate a summary of relevant policy research on this topic, further analysis and illustrative maps by neighborhood, interviews with impacted homeowners, and more detailed recommendations. Our aim is to release the final report in early 2021. 

Appendix: 

Table of assessed and abated value of abated properties, taxes paid, and racial composition by neighborhood.