DETROIT (WXYZ) — Detroit’s city council president says she and her colleagues are working hard to address a long-standing issue of overassessed taxes in the city of Detroit. This large overestimate is impacting thousands of homeowners.
Lifelong resident Paul Larry says he knows firsthand how the overassessment on Detroit property taxes impacts residents.
And while it may be 2022, he says what took place from 2010 to 2014 has left permanent harm on many.
12 years later, the city’s deputy chief financial officer tells 7 Action News that staffing issues and lack of resources led to the costly mistake.
The city is working to help those who suffered losses, but City Council President Mary Sheffield says the solution isn’t as simple as writing checks for estimated losses totaling to $600 million.
“We are looking at how we can explore tax credits to individuals for the amount they were overassessed, but there are some legal issues,” Sheffield said.
Legal issues, the city says, include being prohibited by law from simply sending checks to those affected.
While council has expressed a desire to adequately take on this issue in partnership with the mayor, they are also considering other programs as a way to make homeowners whole.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib criticized the administration.
“We now have a city administration not willing to address this in a meaningful way," Tlaib said.
Deputy CFO Alvin Horhn has fired back, denying people are still being overassessed and that little is being done to help.
Based on his own family’s pain, Larry says he’s just asking for people to come ahead of politics. He believes a tax credit would be a reasonable solution at this point.
Sheffield says in addition to $2 million already set aside to address the issue this year, they are working to put another $4 million next year toward solving this problem.
