The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation

The thesis of the paper is that house values are assessed higher relative to their market price in poor minority neighborhoods.

This is logical because poor neighborhoods are the most cash strapped and so the government does everything it can to generate cash without raising taxes. The easiest way to raise property tax revenue without raising taxes is to value everyone's home higher.

The difference is that in the suburbs, the home owners are more likely to fight these revaluations and win.

Local voters, elect local officials, who set local tax rates. Not to look at outcomes and put some scheme in place, per the authors' suggestion.

The fix for the problem is to elect a different set of local officials.