A Connecticut Superior Court ruled a 48-unit supportive housing property in downtown Hartford has no taxable value at all, a result rarely seen in a property tax appeal, and ordered the City of Hartford to pay the owner’s attorney’s fees and costs on top of it.
The case, Soromundi Commons Limited Partnership v. City of Hartford, centered on apartments inside the Hartford YWCA building at 135 Broad Street. The units house people who are both chronically homeless and living with a disability, with rents subsidized through Section 8 vouchers and state housing programs. Connecticut law caps how this kind of housing can be valued for tax purposes: value has to be based on actual net rental income, not a comparable sales analysis. The property has run at a financial loss every year since at least 2019, so under that formula, its taxable value came out to zero for four straight years running, i.e. 2022 through 2025.
The court rejected the city’s comparable-sales appraisal outright, since state law required a different valuation method for this kind of property. He also found flaws in the owner’s own appraisal, which leaned on national average expense data instead of the property’s real numbers — though that didn’t change the result, since the actual financials still showed a loss.
Beyond the zero valuation, the court awarded the owner its attorney’s fees, holding that a city has to apply tax statutes as written rather than however works out best for its own revenue. Hartford moved the court to reconsider the fee award, arguing the tax appeal statute doesn’t specifically authorize attorney’s fees. The court disagreed, ruling that the statute’s broad grant of equitable power gives it the authority to award fees in a case like this one, and left the award in place.
The City has since appealed the decision to the Appellate Court.
For information regarding property tax matters, please contact Attorney C. Scott Schwefel at (860) 606-1712 or scott@shipmanlawct.com