Dozens of Chicago homeowners attended a meeting hosted by Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s office in West Garfield Park to learn why their property tax assessments skyrocketed.
Among them: Tonya Reed of Maywood, who saw her property tax bill more than double this year, rising from about $5,100 to $11,000. The county mailed almost 1.4 million tax bills on Nov. 14, with payment due Dec. 15, the Chicago Sun Times reported.
For Reed, the tax increase pushed her monthly mortgage payment from $1,600 to $2,400, leaving her family struggling to balance household expenses. The hikes are concentrated in predominantly Black neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West sides, according to a Cook County treasurer’s office report cited at the meeting.
The report attributes the burden shift to reductions granted by the Board of Review to large commercial properties, including retail and data centers. As property values in the Loop have declined since the pandemic, residential values in lower-income neighborhoods have rebounded to pre–Great Recession levels, accelerating tax increases. Other critics have pointed to the assessor’s zero-sum tax system.
Overall, Cook County’s tax levy has risen, while businesses in the central district contribute less. The Board of Review recently reopened appeals for 24 townships, with a Friday deadline. Many attendees at the meeting came to seek exemptions and file appeals with the Board of Review.
West Garfield Park experienced the steepest increases, with median homeowner bills up nearly $2,000, or 133 percent. Longtime resident Dorothy Rosenthal questioned the accuracy of such assessments, noting her property suffered severe flooding in 2023 and remains partially unusable. Despite neighborhood improvements, she argued values could not have risen so dramatically.
At the meeting, residents voiced frustration that sympathy from officials does not offset the financial impact, according to the Sun Times. Kaegi has presented himself as an assessor tough on commercial landlords, claiming that the decline in Downtown Chicago office values was exaggerated.
— Joel Russell