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The Spokesman-Review

Higher values likely to mean higher taxes

What 40 years of helping homeless people in Seattle has taught the head of Operation Nightwatch

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The Spokesman-Review

Higher values likely to mean higher taxes

By Colin Tiernan

THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

The average Spokane County home is worth an incredible 31% more than it was a year ago, according to the assessor’s office.

Spokane County Assessor Tom Konis, who has nearly 30 years of experience in the assessor’s office, said he’s never seen such a dramatic spike.

“It’s the scariest time I’ve been through,” Konis said. “I truly feel sorry for young people trying to buy a house these days.”

The assessor’s office began mailing out property assessments this week. Those valuations are the county’s estimates as of Jan. 1 and tend to be lower than what a property would fetch on the market.

For the 2023 tax year, the average Spokane County home has an assessed value of $418,800. That’s up from $320,900 the year before and more than double the $192,300 figure from the 2017 tax year.

Residential properties aren’t the only ones rising in value. Konis said the total county- wide assessed value went up 30% too, which means commercial properties appreciated at the same rate or more.

That 30% figure comes after a 12% increase last year and it’s the highest annual uptick since at least 1974. In 1993, the county- wide valuation jumped 26%, but that’s the only other year in the last 48 to break the 20% barrier.

Konis said when he started out in the assessor’s office, he’d typically see the county-wide assessed value increase 3% a year or less.

Watching home values grow at this rate is a bit hard to fathom, he said.

“We always kind of laughed at Seattle when they had their peaks and valleys,” he said. “We just didn’t have those. We’ve got a peak right now, I just hope it doesn’t hit a valley.”

Taxes are tricky

A 30% increase in home value does not equate to a 30% increase in property taxes.

But taxes are almost certainly going up.

In 2017, the average Spokane County homeowner paid $2,500 in property taxes. This year, they’re paying $3,500.

While the county’s new assessments will help determine a homeowner’s tax bill, a long list of factors goes into the final figure.

Where the home is, what it’s worth and what happened to values elsewhere all play a role.

Two homeowners living in identical houses on opposite sides of a street might pay different taxes if they live in different tax code areas. Each homeowner might pay for different bonds, schools and emergency response services.

The regular taxes imposed by local governments don’t rise in tandem with property values.

Counties and cities can only collect 1% more from property owners each year unless voters allow them to take more.

For example, if Spokane County collected $100 through its regular property tax last year, it could only take $101 this year. Budgets can go up by more than 1% because governments also gather revenue through sales taxes, taxes on new construction and more, but the regular property tax component is capped.

But cities and counties aren’t the only ones collecting property taxes.

A county homeowner’s property taxes might be split more than 10 ways. Money can go toward bonds, fire districts, emergency medical services, land conservation and more.

The largest chunk of a property tax bill goes to schools, however. Konis said 58% of the tax bill on his house goes toward education.

Schools collect tax revenue differently and aren’t restricted to the 1% annual increase. That’s part of the reason it’s difficult to project how much a homeowner will pay in taxes next year.

Konis explained that the county can’t figure out levy rates until early 2023. Governments have to finalize their budgets first, and voter-approved taxes have to succeed or fail at the November election.

Despite all the complications, the general property tax trends are simple.

For the last few years, homeowners have paid an extra few hundred dollars a year on their tax bill.

Property owners wanting to contest the county’s valuations can appeal. Colin Tiernan can be reached at (509) 459-5039 or at colint@ spokesman. com.

What 40 years of helping homeless people in Seattle has taught the head of Operation Nightwatch

By Anna Patrick

SEATTLE TIMES

On his very last day as head of Operation Nightwatch, the Rev. Rick Reynolds told stories.

Stories of a last-minute Christmas delivery to a homeless family; of pushing a broken-down car down the street during a night of outreach; and the time he made someone unhappy while serving a free meal and got a hot cup of clam chowder thrown at him.

Wearing a blue flowered Hawaiian shirt with his black and white clerical collar peeking above the neckline, Reynolds, or “Pastor Rick” as many know him, reflected on Seattle’s homelessness crisis and the role he’s played in trying to do something about it.

He took over the small but nimble faith-based organization in 1994 after serving as pastor at Seattle Advent Christian Church. Before working at Nightwatch, he volunteered with the organization for a decade, doing street outreach largely to patrons of old dive bars around downtown Seattle, many of which are gone now.

For nearly 40 years, he’s either worked or volunteered for Nightwatch, trying to help some of Seattle’s poorest neighbors get more of the things they need, like a hot meal, a warm place to sleep or new, dry socks. During that time, he’s watched the city’s homeless population snowball. In 1996, Reynolds and a team of volunteers counted 485 people sleeping outside in Seattle’s downtown core. The last pointin- time count in 2020 showed more than 3,700 people were living unsheltered in Seattle.

Under Reynolds’ leadership, Nightwatch’s budget has grown from $75,000 to around $1.8 million. The group conducts regular street outreach, offers free meals and connects people with overnight shelter nightly, and provides permanent affordable housing for up to 24 seniors.

Reynolds turned 69 on May 31, the day before he retired. He isn’t tired from the work. Or even tired of Nightwatch. “I’m just tired,” he said.

Reynolds said he’s thinking about turning some of his stories from decades spent working in homelessness into a book. But for now, he’s shared a few, and some of his lessons learned: 1. “Every obstacle will rear its ugly head.”

While going out on the streets (something he did at least once a week the entire 28 years he worked at Nightwatch), Reynolds met a man he knew was old enough to qualify for the program’s single- room- occupancy housing, for seniors 62 and above. But he didn’t know how much of an odyssey getting him into housing would be.

At first, the man wanted to wait two more years – surviving outside in the meantime – so he could qualify for larger Social Security checks before moving in and paying for the subsidized room (today, the rooms cost between $275 and $300 monthly).

“You know you’ve got to apply [for Social Security],” Reynolds told him, after the two years came and went. “The money doesn’t automatically come to you.”

But the man didn’t have ID, so they had to start there. Reynolds took him to a social worker. There they realized that the name on his birth certificate didn’t match the name on his Social Security card.

He was a veteran, so someone must have put two and two together at some point, Reynolds thought. They went to the Department of Veterans Affairs for help, knowing that a federal ID would make it easier to get Social Security and a state ID.

The entire process took months. Working in homelessness, Reynolds said, “Every obstacle will rear its ugly head at some point.”

Reynolds remembers the moment his friend finally got what he needed: “He’s standing on the sidewalk with his gleaming, hot VA card picture ID and he goes, ‘I am somebody.’ ” 2. “We don’t have an answer.”

Reynolds remembers one night, around 25 years ago, when a group of Microsoft employees volunteered, helping serve the nightly free meal.

One of the volunteers recognized two women standing in line for food and shelter. He said they both worked for a contractor, providing food service at one of Microsoft’s Redmond buildings.

“It’s not just that our social-service system is broken. It’s that we don’t have an answer for the gap between whether a working-class person can make it with the cost of housing,” Reynolds said.

“It’s impinging on the middle-class people now, so we’re really aware of it,” he said.

“But it’s been this way for a long time.”

3. “Our job is to get over ourselves.”

When Reynolds took the helm at Nightwatch, replacing original Executive Director Norm Riggins, he said he was “just full of myself at the time.”

Early into his job, Reynolds said, there was one guy who often showed up in the evening, hopeful that Nightwatch could get him into overnight shelter. The man struggled with substance use, Reynolds said. He had a tendency to get loud and out of control. And Reynolds said shelters would call and say, “Hey, we love Ronnie, but don’t send him ever again.”

Finding shelter placements for him became harder, but Reynolds remembers one night when Ronnie looked happy because he had a shelter slip in his hand.