Tulane faculty uncovers a property tax trap for senior homeowners

may 27, 2026

BY rawad nahhas

Casius Pealer, Senior Professor of Practice in the School of Architecture and Built Environment, published a commentary in local investigative outlet Verite News revealing that a policy designed to help elderly and disabled homeowners in Louisiana pay less in property taxes has been doing the opposite in Orleans Parish, and Pealer has prompted the Assessor's office to commit to fixing it.

The piece, titled "A property tax trap for senior and disabled homeowners will soon be fixed," exposes a paradox in the administration of Louisiana's Special Assessment Level (SAL) freeze: while the policy is designed to prevent property taxes from rising for low-income senior and disabled homeowners, the way Orleans Parish applies it also prevents assessments from going down when property values decrease. In other Louisiana parishes, including East Baton Rouge, Lafayette, St. Tammany, and St. Charles, the freeze is treated as a ceiling — just as state law intends. In Orleans Parish, it functions as a lock.

The research behind the commentary grew directly out of Pealer's real estate classroom at Tulane. Students in the Real Estate Development Program (Spring 2026) collected individual property data for more than 500 parcels in the East Carrollton neighborhood as part of a class project examining the impact of Tulane and Loyola student housing on neighborhood change. Among those parcels, 40 properties carried age freezes — enough to reveal a troubling pattern and prompt Pealer to investigate further. Spot checks in three additional neighborhoods, Old Aurora in Algiers, Edgewood Park in Gentilly, and Village de L'Est in New Orleans East, found that nearly one in five frozen-assessment homeowners were being overcharged, by an average of 12%. Taken citywide, Pealer estimates that more than 3,500 low-income seniors in Orleans Parish are collectively paying at least $500,000 more per year solely because of how the policy is being applied.

The commentary prompted a direct response from the Assessor's Office, which acknowledged being aware of the issue and announced that revised notices would be sent to affected homeowners, with overpayments credited toward 2027 taxes — a reduction Pealer estimates at more than $2 million for more than 3,500 New Orleans homeowners. The piece also raises a broader concern. The lack of affordable public access to aggregate Orleans Parish property data creates blind spots that slow research, community advocacy, and policy reform.