(Particularly) Interesting posts in today's Frozen Tropics blog

Elise Bernard's Trinidad-H Street weblog is always interesting.

Today there are three good posts: (1) a listing of the tax delinquent properties on H Street; (2) "before" photos of a property to be "attacked" this Saturday by the nascent Trinidad Garden Club; and (3) a photo of a property vacant for many many years, yet not listed on the DCRA-Office of Tax and Revenue's list of vacant properties, so the property is not subject to the 500% multiplication of property tax rates that is supposed to be assessed on vacant properties in the District of Columbia.

With regard to the latter, there are many loopholes, unfortunately, and another problem is that since the properties are assessed for so little to begin with, for awhile property owners don't seem to do very much.

400 K Street NE, Photo by Elise Bernard. E.g., this property at 4th and K Streets NE has been vacant for as long as I've lived in DC--since 1987--it's now taxed at the "vacant property rate" tax class 3, but it wasn't for a long time. It's possible that a complaint by me changed this. Still, it's a lovely building, clearly an old corner store.

One of the comments to Elise's posting said, "who do I contact about this?" I'm not sure, but DCRA does inspect such properties. OTR is involved as well.

Anyway, this is something that each ANC commissioner could get involved in, working with other interested citizens, compiling a list of all such properties byANC Single Member District, and forwarding this on to the appropriate city officials.

Note that for commercial properties, one of the loopholes that let's you get out of being charged the higher rate is to put up a "for lease" sign--that way you can say you are actively marketing the building, even if the building is fundamentally uninhabitable.