St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer is urging residents whose homes suffered serious damage in the May 16 tornado to apply for property tax relief.
The Board of Aldermen voted in May to adopt a state law that allows residents to prorate their property tax bill to the time they were able to live in the building. The law was written to incentivize new construction, but it also allows the owner to apply for relief if a building is rendered uninhabitable by a natural disaster.
At a recent press briefing, Spencer said she knows that future tax relief won't help meet immediate needs.
"But especially when you're going to pay taxes next year, foreclosures and things like that creep up really quickly if you're not doing that," she said.
Assessor Shawn Ordway called the relief "a matter of principle."
"A lot of people don't feel it's fair to pay taxes on their property for the full year when they were only able to be in it for a certain amount of time," he said.
More than 100 people have applied. Applications are due Oct. 1 and are available online or at the assessor's office. A city tax board should begin reviewing them this month, Ordway said. Like many disaster relief programs, the tax proration is only available for the property owner, but Ordway said staff members at the assessor's office will help however they can to correct a deed or city ownership records.
He said he expects members of the Board of Equalization to consider that many people stayed in uninhabitable buildings because they had nowhere else to go.
"If somebody's living in a tent or living in their car, they're certainly not occupying the building. That seems to be pretty clear," he said. "If it's somebody who's just decided to stay there, I don't know how the board is going to rule on those."
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