Tax the lot, not the house
A proposal for a split rate property tax in East Providence: the same levy, collected from land before buildings, so that homes on streets the city already serves carry more of next year’s budget and rate increases carry less. Page through with the arrows or the arrow keys (on a phone, turn it sideways or scroll the slide); every figure is from the FY2026 assessor roll, the adopted budget and the state’s levy reports.
East Providence · November 2026 · Draft
Fixing a structural tax liability
The city’s bills go up about 4 percent a year whether or not anyone builds. Today the same homeowners pay that increase every year. This plan has the land help pay, collects the same total, and forces no one to do anything.
$212
more on the typical home, every year nothing new gets built
4 in 10
taxed acres are single family lots, and they bring in the least per acre of any kind of home
$907
what a single family resident costs the city beyond what they pay in; $32 for an apartment resident
East Providence tax assessor data, FY2026 (16,202 parcels); FY2026 adopted budget; U.S. Census (ACS 2020 to 2024). Draft for review.
Two numbers to remember
The gap, and the lever
The average single family home
−$2,277 a year
Pays in
$10,025
Costs
$12,302
Pays in: $5,208 of property tax plus $4,815 of state aid that follows its residents. Costs: schools $7,824, police, fire, library and city hall $3,800, streets $449, trash $229.
Storefronts, factories and apartment buildings make up the difference. That works as long as the gap does not grow.
A decade of infill at Pennsylvania’s pace
+$3.7M a year
of new tax revenue: 500 backyard homes, 600 apartments on commercial streets, 100 cottage homes, no new roads or schools. Five percent more homes, the top of the Pennsylvania range; at 2 percent, 440 homes and $1.3 million.
+1,700
residents, up 3.6%
+70
students, up 1.7%
+$0.8M to $1.8M
left over after it pays for its own services
About $250 a year off the typical home’s bill by 2035. Not a cure, but the one lever that bends the line.
FY2026 budget allocated by home type at today’s rates (2.51 residents per single family home, ACS 2020 to 2024). Infill: $150,000 backyard homes, $175,000 apartments (recent East Providence buildings assess at $165,000 to $196,000 a unit), $330,000 condos; the range is average cost versus schools with room and no new street.
The liability
The tax levy rises every year, built or not
$180M
$160M
$140M
$120M
$100M
$80M
2016
2020
2025
2030
2035
$94M in 2016
$118M in 2025
$154M on the ten year trend
$175M if every year takes the 4% cap
Forecast, no new tax base
Up 2.7 percent a year for ten years, and this year’s budget took the full 4 percent. If nothing new gets built, today’s owners pay all of it: the typical home goes from $5,300 to about $6,900 a year by 2035 on the trend, or $7,850 at the cap.
Certified property tax levy by East Providence fiscal year, excluding the motor vehicle excise, from the RI Division of Municipal Finance tax cap and levy by class reports; trend is a compound growth fit to FY2016 through FY2025, projected to FY2035.
The liability · single family lots by size
The bigger the lot, the less it brings in per acre
Under 5,000 sq ft
2,943 lots · 287 acres · 14% of the land
$49,470 an acre
5,000 to 7,499 sq ft
4,040 lots · 591 acres · 29% of the land
$37,249 an acre
7,500 to 9,999 sq ft
2,434 lots · 477 acres · 23% of the land
$29,865 an acre
10,000 sq ft and up
2,034 lots · 694 acres · 34% of the land
$19,947 an acre
The 2,034 largest lots are 18 percent of the city’s single family lots but a third of the land, and they bring in 40 cents on the dollar of what the smallest lots do, per acre the city plows and paves. These are the lots with room for a second home, or a split where zoning allows, and the lots the plan asks to carry their share of the street.
All 11,451 single family lots on the FY2026 assessor roll, 2,050 acres; tax is the estimated FY2026 bill before exemptions, divided by lot area. Of the largest group, 1,562 lots are 10,000 to 14,999 sq ft, 240 are 15,000 to 19,999, 189 are 20,000 sq ft to an acre, and 43 are an acre or more.
What
The lot pays first. The building pays less. The city collects the same total.
Pay for the seat, not the meal. The plow, the paving crew and the police car pass every lot on the street, full or empty, so every lot pays for the street, and what you build on it costs less.
Empty 10,000 sq ft lot
Today
$1,833
With the fix
$4,338, up
Same lot with a house
Today
$5,971
With the fix
$6,296, up $325
House with an ADU
Today
$7,974
With the fix
$7,244, down $730
Today: $13.35 per $1,000 on land and building alike. The fix: $31.59 on land, $6.32 on buildings. Same $116.8 million in total. Figures for a 10,000 sq ft lot at the median value ($447,300), from the FY2026 assessor roll.
So what
Nobody is told what to do. A big lot gets three choices.
Keep it as it is
+$325
a year on the typical 10,000 sq ft lot. The land pays its share of the street.
Add a small second home
$948
a year in tax on a $150,000 addition, instead of $2,002 today. Building is taxed less.
Sell off a building lot
$4,919
a year on the house, down from $7,146, plus the sale, on a half acre lot big enough to split. A new neighbor then pays $4,558.
Think of a downtown parking spot: hold it empty and you still pay for the spot. Every one of these choices helps pay the city’s bills, and the city collects the same total either way.
First card: 10,000 sq ft single family lot at the median value ($447,300). Third card: half acre lot at the median value ($535,300); the split assumes the land value divides evenly between the two lots. FY2026 assessor roll.
So what · who pays more, who pays less
Build on your land, pay less. Sit on it, pay more.
Empty lot
+110%
House on a big, valuable lot
+30%
Factory or warehouse, fully built
+7%
Typical home ($397,000)
+3%
Three family home
−20%
Apartment building
−32%
The typical home moves about $150 a year. The big movers are empty lots, which double, and the buildings that hold the most people, which come down. Same $116.8 million in total.
Change in the yearly tax bill at 5 to 1, FY2026 assessor roll. Orange is up, navy is down. Examples: a 35 acre empty commercial lot; a $397,000 Rumford house on 0.19 acre; 115 Tripps Lane; the median single family home; the median three family home; the Christine apartments.
The evidence
Eighteen Pennsylvania cities ran the experiment. They got more homes, not bigger ones.
What happened there
+2 to 5%
more homes per acre within about a decade of switching, compared with Pennsylvania towns that kept a flat rate: about 2 points at a typical 4 to 1 ratio, about 5 across all adopters. House size did not change. The effect was more homes on the same land.
Harrisburg has run a two rate tax since 1975, under councils of both parties, and no one has repealed it.
What 2 percent means here
440 homes
2 percent of our 21,921 homes, on streets we already serve: about $1.3 million a year of new tax base, 620 residents, 26 students, and $0.3 to $0.7 million left over after they pay for their own services. At 5 percent: 1,100 homes and $3.3 million a year.
The realistic decade on the second slide, 1,200 homes, sits at the top of that range. Pennsylvania got there without telling anyone what to do.
Banzhaf and Lavery, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper (2008) and Journal of Urban Economics (2010): census tracts in Pennsylvania’s split rate cities versus single rate towns, 1970 to 2000. East Providence figures apply the study’s range to the city’s 21,921 homes at the infill mix and per home costs used throughout this deck.
Now what · four steps, the council at the wheel
A course correction, not a quick fix
1
Show every owner their number
A public map of what each lot would pay, before any vote.
2
Ask the State House for the OK
A council resolution asking our delegation to amend the city’s tax law (RIGL 44-5-11.10), club and public land protections included.
3
Turn the dial a little each year
Three years to get to 5 to 1. The council votes each step with the tax rate, and can stop or turn it back.
4
Value empty land honestly
No new law needed. A house lot is worth about $700,000 an acre on the roll; 77 acres of golf course carry $0 of land value.
This is not a silver bullet. Three quarters of our taxable lots are single family homes that cost more than they pay, and that anchor does not lift in a year. But a ship turns slowly, and the time to turn the wheel is now, while the choice is still ours.
Rhode Island sets property classes by use (RIGL 44-5-11.8 and 44-5-11.10); the 4 percent levy cap is untouched. Eighteen Pennsylvania cities have used split rates for decades, Harrisburg since 1975.
Sources: East Providence tax assessor data, FY2026 (land, building and total value for 16,202 parcels); City of East Providence FY2026 adopted budget; RI Division of Municipal Finance tax cap and levy by class reports, FY2016 to FY2025; U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020 to 2024; Banzhaf and Lavery, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (2008) and Journal of Urban Economics (2010). Draft for review.