Former Ashtabula County auditor Rep. David Thomas whom Republican leadership appointed to lead property tax reform, co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Adam Mathews, a Republican from Lebanon. Thomas said most counties rarely oust seniors from their homes anyway, but this codifies the practice that “Ohio will not kick grandma out.”
“We cannot say it definitively, but we should be able to say it and respond to the concerns of our taxpayers clearly, that Ohio does not foreclose on seniors. H.B. 443 makes this clear. Ohio will not foreclose on seniors — we will be the first in the nation to say so."
An analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Service Commission reported property tax delinquencies and penalties totaled $872 million in 2024. The bill would apply to roughly 27% of homeowners facing foreclosure, so local taxing bodies that rely on property taxes to provide services could lose about $233 million.
“Since only a small portion of these delinquent taxes would otherwise advance to foreclosure or tax-certificate sale, the actual revenue loss to local governments would be smaller,” the report reads.
Ohio ranked 12th in the country for foreclosures in January, according to ATTOM, a national real estate data company, with 1,708 filings or one in every 3,099 housing units. Ohio Supreme Court new case filings show foreclosures increased 8% from 21,978 in 2024 to 23,719 last year.
H.B. 443 got a second hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee Tuesday when Thomas submitted and got approval for an amendment that changes one of the parameters for foreclosure freedom.
Under the original version the homeowner must have made “some” payments toward the delinquent amounts. The amendment says they have to have paid what they paid in the previous year toward the delinquency to avoid foreclosure.
Thomas told this news outlet the amendment prevents people from taking advantage of the benefit.
“There was the fear that if we put out our original version which just said you had to have made some type of payment yearly, that why would anyone over 65 pay — even if they could afford it — anything,” he said. “It essentially was how do we both make sure that people who can afford to pay things are paying but also protect those who cannot afford it.”
Democratic committee member Rep. Dan Troy of Willowick asked if they could expand the bill to include enhancing the Homestead exemption that is aimed at helping low-income seniors and others.
Thomas alluded to the grassroots effort started by a group of senior citizens in Cuyahoga County to eliminate property taxes altogether. He said they could soon see ads “with grandma at the kitchen table being forced to choose between leaving her home and being foreclosed and having to pay their tax bill.”
He said a simple bill that guarantees that can’t happen is the best course of action.
Beth Blackmarr, spokesperson for Citizens for Property Tax Reform, told this media outlet “I am very happy with this” proposed new law but it doesn’t solve the entire problem because taxes are impacting mortgage payments as well.
“People have mortgages too and are losing their homes to the banks because they can’t afford their mortgages,” she said. “I guess the thing to do for people that are seniors would be to take the property tax off their mortgage payments and do it that way.”
Cuyahoga County has consistently had the highest number of foreclosures in the state since before the pandemic, according to high court case statistics. This media outlet obtained a breakdown of tax and mortgage foreclosures from the county prosecutor’s office there and tax foreclosures have totaled 16,410 compared to 14,659 mortgage takings since 2019.
Thomas said they can only enforce tax matters.
“If you don’t pay your mortgage,” Thomas said. “That is not something I don’t even think legally we can get in the middle of.”
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