INDIANAPOLIS â Carlette Duffy felt both vindicated and excited. Both relieved and angry.
For months, she suspected she had been low-balled on two home appraisals because sheâs Black. She decided to put that suspicion to the test and asked a white family friend to stand in for her during an appraisal.
Her homeâs value suddenly shot up. A lot.
During the early months of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the first two appraisers who visited her home in the historic Flanner House Homes neighborhood, just west of downtown Indianapolis, valued it at $125,000 and $110,000, respectively.
But that third appraisal went differently.
Black Homeowner Had a White Friend Stand in for Third Appraisal Her Home Value Doubled
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Carlette Duffy felt both vindicated and excited. Both relieved and angry.
For months, she suspected she had been low-balled on two home appraisals because she s Black. She decided to put that suspicion to the test and asked a white family friend to stand in for her during an appraisal.
Her home s value suddenly shot up. A lot.
During the early months of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the first two appraisers who visited her home in the historic Flanner House Homes neighborhood, just west of downtown, valued it at $125,000 and $110,000, respectively.
But that third appraisal went differently.
To get that one, Duffy, who is African American, communicated with the appraiser strictly via email, stripped her home of all signs of her racial and cultural identity and had the white husband of a friend stand in for her during the appraiser s visit.
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El Paso is being squeezed.
In 2019, the Texas state legislature passed SB2 which limits property tax increases to 3.5 percent per year. Meanwhile, most of the city s budget is based on largely unfunded state mandates. And where the state in 2008 funded 45 percent of local education costs, that s been reduced to just 39 percent today.
So even before the COVID-19 crisis hit, The wiggle room we have to spend on projects we think are important becomes smaller and smaller, observes El Paso County Commissioner, David Stout.
El Paso, a city similar in size to Boston and Washington, D.C., is politically a blue triangle at the far end of a sea of red in West Texas â and Stout thinks politics plays a big role in the increasing limits on local spending: The state legislature wants to stop local progressive policies from being put in place.