This spring, the NC Housing Coalition’s Community Justice Collaborative worked with neighborhood leaders and community-rooted organizations in Historically Black neighborhoods across the Triangle to form county-focused property tax working groups and to facilitate a series of property tax justice workshops. These workshops aimed to support neighbors in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods to analyze the fairness of their new tax values and property taxes, to combine market and assessment data analysis with the knowledge of rooted neighbors in order to identify broader inequities, and to support long standing neighbors with property value appeals and tax relief applications. The workshops utilized several tools we piloted this spring: a property tax impact calculator, a neighborhood sales bank to support comparative market analysis, a data equity portal created in partnership with Dataworks NC, and a set of forms and templates that helped neighbors identify the strongest evidence-based appeal arguments. Our hope is to improve and expand access to these tools to other communities throughout the state.
In three months, we facilitated 13 workshops across three counties in collaboration with 75 volunteers and over 20 organizations, neighborhood associations, and churches. Because of the power of community organizers and rooted partner organizations, hundreds of long standing neighbors turned out – from Northside & Rogers Road (Chapel Hill), Councilville & Piney Grove (Orange County), Walltown & Bragtown (Durham), Merrick Moore & Crest Street (Durham), Grant Street & Old East Durham (Durham), Biltmore Hills & Rochester Heights (Raleigh), Battery Heights & South Park (Raleigh), Stratford Park & Apollo Heights (Raleigh). At several workshops, turnout was more than double the expected attendance, including in rural areas where over 40 long standing residents packed into fellowship halls.
Workshops were set up in stations for neighbors to utilize the property tax calculator, to explore whether there were reasons to appeal their valuation, and to see if they qualified for local and state tax relief programs. Workshop attendees also reviewed neighborhood sales and assessment data and helped us identify potential neighborhood-wide equity issues like untracked investor renovated sales inflating neighborhood values, community-wide tax record data mistakes, inflated land values, and lack of differentiation in the valuation between homes of vastly different sizes and conditions within neighborhoods. We set up one on one clinics to support any individuals who wanted help preparing evidence for their appeals or filling out relief applications.
More than 360 neighbors participated in a workshop, and at last count, over 300 of these neighbors filed appeals and/or relief applications with our evidence-based support.
“I just don’t understand what’s going on. These new property values are not fair. It feels like y’all are trying to take our properties.” – Long standing Councilville resident speaking to the Orange County commissioners
These workshops helped bring to light the property tax inequities here in the Triangle. In Orange and Durham Counties, many of the Historically Black neighborhoods saw their 2025 property tax values more than double, far exceeding average county value increases. This means that these neighborhoods will see a massive rise in tax burden even with lower tax rates. While a portion of this increase is driven by market rises and investment pressures, much of it is driven by the shortcomings of mass assessment tools.
For example, if the current values stand, the taxes of sixth generation lifetime neighbors in Durham’s Hayti community would see their taxes increase 100% because their 75-year-old homes are valued at nearly the same as brand new, larger homes on their block. In Durham’s Walltown, developers would pay 1/10th the amount of taxes as long-term homeowners next door with the exact same lot sizes with no market justification. Across the Triangle, Habitat for Humanity homeowners working to stay in their homes would see their taxes skyrocket with properties assessed for as high as $500,000, 30% higher than comparable area sales. In Orange County, examples are so stark that the Marian Cheek Jackson Center created this satirical Price It Right game show to shed light on the inequities, including a tiny house in the Black community that was valued higher than a 4,000 sq ft mansion with an ADU on an acre of property near downtown. In Carrboro, a 3rd generation Black resident shared his own example to the County Commissioners: “My home is 2 bedroom, 762 total Sq ft. with a tax value of $423,400. Had to take a loan out just to pay the taxes. I’m on fixed income, I am 79 years old. There’s a house 600 feet away from my house: 6 bedroom, 2016 sq ft: $403,200. And that’s a rental property…And yet my taxes are higher than theirs.”
While these are remarkable examples, they are not an anomaly. These workshops have helped identify over a dozen neighborhoods across the Triangle with systemic-level inequities resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars of over-taxation of long-term Black residents in each of these neighborhoods. In fact, long-term neighbors in historically Black neighborhoods across Orange County will see their property tax burden increase by over $2,000,000 collectively while wealthier white neighborhoods with nearly the exact same market increases would see their tax burdens fall.
Property taxes are essential for our communities, but they should be fairly distributed. While these workshops exemplified the power of our neighborhoods rising together, they also exposed the problems with a system that puts the burden for correct valuation on individual appeals rather than holding tax offices accountable to make broader neighborhood adjustments that are within their power and responsibility.
“We’ve learned to trust one another more. That trust has been put into power. We’re still connected by the same fight…and now we’re beginning to get results. We are raising our voices collectively, and that’s what they [commissioners/tax offices] are starting to hear.” – Bishop Reid, Historic Rogers Road Community
Joined now by hundreds of long-term neighbors who have attended these workshops, coalitions in each county are organizing advocacy efforts to push for broader fixes with the tax offices and, when necessary, the county commissioners. In Durham, leaders from Walltown and Crest Street are working for neighborhood-wide corrections. In Southeast Raleigh, the coalition of partners have helped bring about corrections in three neighborhoods. And in Orange County, a broad-based advocacy effort is underway for wholescale correction.
In a few weeks, we will publish a full report on neighborhood-level data analysis in Orange County and broader advocacy actions proposed by neighborhood leaders to support property tax justice in the Triangle and throughout the state of North Carolina. Thanks to the rising groundswell of community organizers, partner organizations, and impacted neighbors across the Triangle, we anticipate successful appeals saving long standing residents over $1 million collectively. Neighborhood assessments should still be corrected, and we will continue to advocate for the wholesale reexamination of the methods and means by which County assessors arrived at current valuations. The Community Justice Collaborative will continue to support the rising coalition of neighborhoods fighting for the systemic changes that are not only possible but are urgently necessary to ensure fairness and to prevent the displacement of long standing residents.
Many thanks to all our partners and workshop hosts: Grant Street Community & Monument of Faith, Merrick Moore CDC, Bragtown Neighborhood Association, Crest Street Community Council, Walltown Community Association, West End Community Foundation and West End/Lyon Park Neighborhood Association, Men of Southeast Raleigh, SE Raleigh Promise, SE Raleigh Table, Raleigh Village East, Biltmore Hills Neighborhood Association, Rochester Heights Neighborhood, The Marian Cheek Jackson Center & Northside Compass Group, Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association, Lee’s Chapel in Cedar Grove, Piney Grove Missionary Baptist, Justice United, organizers of Councilville and Mars Hill and Cedar Grove, Land Loss Prevention Project, Triangle Realtist, Coastal Credit Union Real Estate Team, NC Chapter of the National Conference of Black Lawyers.
