PDC loses its property tax case
The Oregon Tax Court has ruled that the Portland Development Commission, in charge of the city's misguided "urban renewal" juggernaut, has to pay property taxes to Multnomah County on a low-rent hotel that it's operating downtown. Unless the PDC wants to take the matter up to the state supreme court, that's all she wrote -- it must pay.
It's poetic justice: The "urban renewal" gang, which robs property taxes from other essential government functions to pad developers' wallets, now has to pay some of the money back.
The Tax Court judge's ruling couldn't be simpler: The PDC isn't a housing authority, and so it isn't fulfilling its public function when it runs a boarding house. If the PDC doesn't like it, the court said, it should go to the state legislature for a special exemption.
But really -- why? The PDC is getting poor results in its stated missions. It ought to stick to the knitting and leave the public housing to people who know what they're doing. (Prior posts here and here.)
| Posted at 7:47 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (3)
By "people who know what they are doing", I assume you mean housing provided by home builders, landlords, private charities and developers who use their own money. I agree. M
Posted by Nolo | January 4, 2013 4:20 PM
I've worked with those PDC guys, 'rehabbing' a couple of complexes in North Portland.
Posted by Jo | January 5, 2013 3:13 AM
...sorry, i posted too quickly. I meant to add that in order to rehab a rundown apartment complex you not only must fix up the facilities but also evict all the drug addicts and anyone that doesn't pay on time. ANYONE. It's draconian, but without cash flow a property will fall behind on upkeep and slip back into being slummy.
So I went ahead and started getting rid of every dealer and anyone else that was consistently late in paying. It took several months. I was in the process of getting new residents when the PDC started flipping out over the vacancy rate.
"How can we justify paying to rehab a property no on lives in!?!?!?!"
Very interesting people, whom I ignored. 6 months later, when I left the project, it was 100% full of people who paid on time and didn't trash the property. Only one resident, ONE, had to pay 3 days late each month, but had no problem also paying the $50 late fee. He'd been doing the same for nearly 10 years. Strange guy, but I decided to keep him and his family.
PDC: "You need to really get on that guy about paying on time, he's messing up the books."
Hopeless. We were actually making money off of that guy. But that didn't matter.
Posted by Jo | January 5, 2013 3:24 AM