"We're not trying to move people out of their homes," Richardson said in an interview. "We're just trying to get them to take seriously their responsibility to the city and School District. . . . When people start to recognize we're really serious, we'll get more people coming to us to work out payment agreements."
The two men spoke in response to The Inquirer's report last week that described Philadelphia's property-tax collection system as the least effective among the nation's big cities.
More than 110,000 Philadelphia properties, nearly one in five, are delinquent, their owners at least nine months overdue in paying their real estate tax bills.
The problem costs the city and School District millions of dollars in revenue - $232 million in unpaid taxes, penalties, and interest over the last 10 years, according to a Revenue Department report - and plays a major role in creating and sustaining urban blight.
A national authority on property-tax collection systems, law professor Frank S. Alexander of Emory University in Atlanta, described the city's delinquency levels as "astronomical."
"Those numbers tell you there is a very high rate of nonenforcement," Alexander said. "It means that the city has made a decision not to go after those properties."
In an article in this issue of The Inquirer, Dubow and Richardson say the Nutter administration views Philadelphia's legacy of tax delinquency and vacant property as "one of the biggest challenges facing the city."
They say the city has already taken steps to strengthen tax collections and is developing new policies to deal with vacant land, an effort involving multiple city agencies, community-development corporations, private developers and City Council.
