The town council in Castle Rock, CO, received a shocking briefing at a recent meeting: that their single, mid-sized region within a single, mid-sized state has accrued almost a billion dollars of debt. But how?
Read More
Alex Alsup comes back to the Strong Towns Podcast to talk about property taxes and assessments in Detroit—and a useful tool that homeowners, assessors, and nonprofits can use in balancing this imbalanced system.
Read More
As America’s cities continue their halting climb up and out of the last few years, data analytics firm Urban3 foresees a few crises—as well as opportunities—waiting for them in 2023.
Read More
Strong communities don't need (costly) external validation.
Read More
The Conservancy of Southwest Florida has done the math on a proposed development in rural Collier County, FL, and what they discovered enabled them to take a large-scale developer to court.
Read More
The maintenance backlog excuse should not be the end of the conversation—it should be the start of a new one.
Read More
All over the U.S., studies have shed light on how much residents in lower-valued homes are being overassessed on property taxes. Now, Buncombe County, NC, is offering residents a space to appeal their assessments.
Read More
What kind of financial challenges can our cities and towns expect to face in the new year?
Read More
Our friends over at Urban3 share some of their favorite visuals from 2022—each of which tells a mathematical truth about the places we choose to develop and inhabit.
Read More
Neighbors in Chapel Hill, NC, mobilized to raise awareness of property tax inequities within their community…and ultimately brought about a $7-million reduction in home assessed values.
Read More
Part of having transparent local accounting is ensuring that the people living in a community know and understand the public costs associated with their homes and businesses. Right now, that isn’t the case in most places.
Read More
We've said it'll take 39 years for Salem, OR, to recoup the money they're spending on the McGilchrist Street “Improvement” Project, and you've asked us to provide more proof for this assertion. So, let's do the math.
Read More
This new interactive map shows homeowners how their home assessment compares to other properties nearby—and has exposed that many homes of similar value are being overassessed.
Read More
If a natural disaster hit your city, would your tax revenue pay for the damage, or would you be underwater—literally and figuratively?
Read More
A small, local, mixed-use business versus a new Amazon warehouse. Let’s put these two business proposals before the Shark Tank (Winnipeg edition).
Read More
Stunning new data analysis on the homes lost to tax forfeiture in Detroit shows that, in just a three-year span, $300 million in real estate transferred from homeowners living in Detroit to outside owners.
Read More
Property taxes represent the largest source of revenue for most local governments, and data shows that even unglamorous downtown areas offer more value as taxable properties than big box stores.
Read More
Mansions on large lots, not rundown properties in low-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods, are the real blight on a community’s financial health.
Read More
Yet another failed mall (this time in Milwaukee, WI) proves to be a drag on—and an active harm to—its surroundings.
Read More
Strong Towns interviews Dr. Christopher Berry, of the University of Chicago, on how we can begin making meaningful changes to the U.S.’s broken property tax system.
Read More