New provincial assessments sent out last week are raising property taxes across Ottawa – and to no one’s surprise, many Centretown residents are facing stiff increases.
While there has always been a gap in property values between downtown and the suburbs, that gap is widening. Across the city of Ottawa, residential property taxes are increasing by an average of 13.9 per cent. But in Somerset ward, the average increase is a whopping 23.7 per cent.
According to Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes, increased property taxes are hurting a lot of people.
“It forces people out of the area,” says Holmes. “[The property assessment system] has no relation to how much people can pay.”
And many of those being forced out, according to the Council on Aging in Ottawa, are seniors. According to a recently released report from the organization, “taxes based on mounting assessed values on inner-city properties disproportionately affect seniors on fixed incomes.”
The report also says that the number of seniors living in Ottawa will more than double by 2031, and the city currently does not have enough affordable housing to accommodate the surging seniors population.
Re/Max realtor Ian Hassell says this is a scenario he has seen before. “A senior who bought their home for $15,000 … now can’t pay property taxes on their house worth $800,000.”
The assessment values are determined by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, a non-profit organization that does assessments across the province. MPAC determines property value by looking at the location, lot size, living area, age of the property, and the quality of the construction.
Several realtors in Ottawa have says that the system is flawed and is hurting the people who live downtown.
“The guys who are having taxes go down, they aren’t getting any service reductions,” says Hassell.
“And the guys who are having taxes go up, they aren’t having any service increases. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Eric Manherz, a realtor with Royal LePage, agree that the system is flawed.
“Most houses never have someone come to assess them,” says Manherz in an e-mail, explaining that a house’s value is typically extrapolated from other properties in the area.
“I had clients last year in Hunt Club who had an assessed value for their house, with not really any upgrades in the last 20 years, higher than any house had ever sold in the neighbourhood – including those that sold that were totally renovated.”
But the new assessments don't seem to be hurting all homeowners.
Catherine Boucher, executive director of the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation, a non-profit organization that provides affordable housing to over 2,000 residents, says the property taxes on multi-residential complexes are going down, even though “smaller, older homes will be going up significantly.”