“A lot of people opened the mail on 8/8 to $20,000+ half year property tax bills”

“Dear PoPville,

Just wanted to write in and let you know DCRA is flexing its incompetent muscles again and inexplicably classified a chunk of occupied homes in DC as vacant properties. They then didn’t notify the homeowners and then let us all find out through OTR with our second half 2022 property tax payments. A lot of people opened the mail on 8/8 to $20,000+ half year property tax bills on homes that typically have $2-4k half year bills.

When we contacted DCRA , the person said “yeah, we’ve been getting a lot of calls about this today.”

And then told us to call back to schedule an inspection. When we did, they told us no inspectors were available but our request was “logged.” A neighbor was told their property was never classified as ‘occupied’ in the 2 years since they purchased the home. Meanwhile, there is no way to classify your home as ‘occupied’ during the home buying process. Why is the onus on us to do the mental/emotional labor when a DC government agency once again fails its constituents so badly? Second, who can we contact to elevate this to the DC council for an investigation?”