Meet the Dallas millennial who is helping a historic neighborhood out of a property tax nightmare
Nothing riles us up more than property taxes. Every single one of us complains that ours are grossly out of proportion. We storm down to the appraisal office to protest. Some of us even hire professional help for our fight.
When it’s time to pay the bill, we write our check and move on with our lives.
But what if you didn’t even understand how to take the first step in that process? What if you genuinely didn’t have the money to pay?
That’s the story of Hamilton Park resident Belinda Darden, the daughter of one of the first African-American families who settled in this northeast Dallas neighborhood in the 1950s.
When Darden moved into Hamilton Park as a 4-year-old, the neighborhood was the rare welcoming refuge for African-Americans seeking nice new houses in Dallas. But today, the still tightly knit community, made up of about 750 homes, has ignited into a red-hot real estate market where most tax bills have doubled in just the last four years.
Originally built on the outskirts of town, Hamilton Park’s location — at the crossroads of North Central Expressway and Interstate 635, with an abundance of big employers and good transit options — now threatens to choke out original pioneer families and their descendants.
When Darden’s tax bills abruptly swamped her income, the 64-year-old Walmart baker, who reports to work at 3 a.m., didn’t know what to do beyond worry herself sick — and fall behind on payments.
“The taxes are scary because this is where I grew up,” Darden told me. “This has always been home. We have deep bonds here, my neighbors are like my parents now.”
That’s why Darden thanks God that 27-year-old Will Toler showed up a few months ago to help. In turn, Toler’s prayer is simply that he can assist the many other Hamilton Park residents in the same lousy situation.
Will and his dad, Toby, are commercial tax consultants who make their living helping businesses appeal and lower proposed values. The Toler Company has always done a little pro bono residential work, but this spring the father and son felt a calling to help in a much bigger way.
Hamilton Park is particularly close to their hearts because they live nearby and many of Will’s former classmates at Lake Highlands High School were from the neighborhood.
Their initial research into the area’s property taxes confirmed the Tolers’ fears: Not only were the increases shockingly out of kilter for the original-condition homes, but virtually no one was even contesting the tax bills.
Will Toler knew that changing this sad state of affairs wouldn’t be easy — not because of the appraisal system but because of the well-placed skepticism of Hamilton Park residents.
The neighborhood has a long and troubling history of people showing up with big promises.
Residents have most recently been besieged by too-good-to-be-true solicitations — repeated attempts by mail, phone and in person to sell their homes to feed the needs of encroaching house-flippers.
Aided by City Council member Adam McGough, who introduced them to the Hamilton Park Civic League, the Tolers began a series of meetings in which they worked to convince residents that they simply wanted to help — at no charge and with no strings attached.
Darden was one of about a dozen residents who took a chance on the Tolers. Like most of the longtime homeowners, she had no idea of the tax benefits and remedies she was missing out on. She just knew she was drowning in debt.
Her email plea to Will was short and straightforward: “I can’t afford the taxes. Can you please help?”
And he did, earning her trust — and many of her trademark hugs — as he guided her every step of the way. He explained the paperwork she needed to sign, he chauffeured her to the Dallas Central Appraisal District and, most important, he revealed to DCAD what the district couldn’t see for itself.
The core of the Hamilton Park property tax mess is this: Many of the homes are distressingly reflective of having been built in the 1950s, with no remodeling — and often without badly needed repairs. Yet absent individual protests — and the photos and details that go along with them — DCAD had no way of knowing the inside story.
With pictures, compelling narratives and good comparison data in hand, the Tolers won significant reductions on every house they advocated for in Hamilton Park. They secured homestead exemptions for Darden and the many other residents who weren’t even aware of the benefit. And they sorted out confusion around property deeds and other legal documents.
Yes, this is all massively unglamorous work — technical, dry and boring to the average person. But it resulted in real money to those previously in-the-dark Hamilton Park homeowners.
While Darden doesn’t pretend to understand every detail, she knows Will Toler saved her home. “All those people who kept saying they wanted to buy the house?” she recalls. “I don’t want to sell, so I just throw that stuff in the trash. But Will was really offering to help, to help me keep my house by helping with my taxes. And he kept his promise.”
Along the way, the younger Toler has become part of the community he’s trying to help, with invitations to worship, cookouts, family reunions and long front-porch conversations.
“It’s not easy to get people to accept your help when they don’t know you, even when you are honest,” he says. “I always knew we could do this. The thing that was special about helping people like Belinda was how well they treated us, how they invited us into the deepest parts of their homes.”
Will Toler also is steadfast about how much pro bono work he still needs to get done in the neighborhood, and he hopes the first-year victories will give other pioneer families the faith to trust his proposed help.
“We’ve become totally focused on the tax plight of Hamilton Park owners because we know there’s relief in sight for almost all of them,” he said. “Hopefully, that will make things right with as many residents as we can touch.”