Gentrification raises tax bills while making homes uninsurable for poor owners

Evidence

However, as the value rose, their Fulton County property tax bill doubled from 2017 to 2018. At the same time, their home insurance company terminated their policy in the fall of 2018, because, Ms. Hancock says, they couldn’t afford to replace the roof. Now she and her husband, respectively a janitor and a line cook, are being told that their house is too run-down to insure, but at the same time worth twice as much as they bought it for. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 219

Categorization

• SHARE: A concrete anecdote showing how gentrification squeezes low-income homeowners from both directions — rising assessed value and an uninsurable roof — could animate conversations about property tax and insurance equity.