Low-Income Households Bear Brunt of Chicago Tax Hikes

As homeowners begin to receive this year’s property tax bills, Cook County’s poorest communities are once again bearing the bulk of the county’s rising tax burden.

The hardest hit neighborhood this year is West Garfield Park, where the median homeowners saw their bill jump by $2,000 or about 133 percent, a study from Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas found.

The higher tax bills will likely strain many homeowners in the West Chicago neighborhood where the median household income is $38,000, according to Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

Similarly, in the South Side neighborhoods of North Lawndale and Englewood, the median tax bill jumped by over 80 percent.

Pappas’ study noted a sharp decline in property values in the Loop since the pandemic is pushing the county’s property tax burden elsewhere.

“When the Loop gets a cold, the rest of the city gets pneumonia,” Pappas said in a news release accompanying the findings. “I’m particularly concerned how lower-income homeowners in struggling communities are going to be able to pay their bills.”

For the 2024 tax year, the amount of taxes imposed on all commercial properties in the Loop fell by nearly $130 million.

How that burden gets shared is determined by the Cook County Assessor, a position currently held by Fritz Kaegi. But Kaegi’s office has also published its own reports in prior years criticizing commercial property owners’ various efforts to repeal their assessed values and reduce their overall tax burden.

He has said the practice of appealing commercial property values through various channels has led to a “systemic undervaluation” of the county’s commercial properties.

Illinois also requires local government bodies such as city councils and school districts to set their budgets before property values are assessed. That means rather than the assessor giving budget makers a target of available property tax revenue to aim for, local agencies give property owners a total dollar amount they’ll need to generate via taxation, and the assessor determines how to distribute the bill.

Despite ongoing efforts to reform the property tax system in Cook County, the median residential tax bill saw its largest percentage city increase in at least 30 years for the 2024 tax year, Pappas’ study found.

The median residential tax bill in the city rose 16.7 percent to $4,457, according to the study.

In the northern and northwest suburbs, where incomes and median home values are higher, the typical bill rose by 15.7 percent, to $7,008.

Those increases feel more severe in areas of the county that are losing population like the south suburbs. For the 2024 tax year, the median tax bill in south and southwest suburbs rose by 19.9 percent, to $6,117, Pappas found.

As a result, many homeowners fail to pay their property taxes in full. A prior study from Pappas’ office found that for the 2023 tax year, the southern suburb of Harvey billed $57.9 million in taxes but collected only $33.75 million — a 58.29 percent collection rate — leaving more than $24 million unpaid. It was the lowest collection rate in the county.

When taxes go unpaid and municipal services decline, more residents may choose to move elsewhere, leaving an even higher tax burden for those who stay behind.