Tax breaks for the Walnut Commons apartments and other downtown Chattanooga residential projects are boosting rents, hurting the poor and sharpening racial inequalities, some citizens said Wednesday.
But an attorney for Walnut Commons told a city housing panel that efforts to change a tax break agreement to cut off the incentives for the project would be “terribly unfair, illegal and probably unconstitutional.”
“My client won’t take that lying down,” said Alfred Smith, who represents a Nebraska real estate group, to the city’s Health, Educational and Housing Facility Board.
Former Hamilton County Industrial Development Board member Joe Rowe told the panel the tax incentives helping spur an array of new apartment projects downtown are creating gentrification by hiking property values and displacing lower-income families.
“It’s a huge problem. Poor people can’t live downtown,” Rowe said.