D.C.'s problems with vacant, blighted properties haven't gone away, residents and officials say

Thousands of properties in the District are vacant or in need of repairs, but the city has lost out on millions in tax revenue because it is not charging the owners the higher tax rate for blighted properties.

The D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs has flagged nearly 3,000 properties in the city as being blighted or empty, but only 189 are taxed at the blighted rate — the highest tax rate for a property — and 359 are considered vacant but have tax exemptions as of this month.

The rest are taxed the same as an occupied home or business in good repair. Most of these blighted or vacant properties are centered in the District’s poorest neighborhoods in Wards 7 and 8, in neighborhoods such as Deanwood and Congress Heights. Other areas with a high concentration of vacant or blighted properties include Columbia Heights, Shaw, NoMa and areas along the H Street corridor.

The District has been aware of the issue since 2017, when D.C. Auditor Kathleen Patterson found that the DCRA had not strictly regulated unoccupied or derelict buildings, frequently granted exemptions to those rules with no justification and utilized poor information systems. The audit, which focused on a case study of 31 properties, found that the lapses led to $1 million in lost tax revenue from those properties that year — and that the city could be losing out on significantly more.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/07/28/dc-vacant-blighted-properties/