Roughly 2.4 million American homeowners are currently at least 90 days delinquent on their property taxes, according to estimates from the Urban Institute — and the majority of them are not people who made reckless financial decisions. They are people like Garrett Norwood: working, careful, and quietly overwhelmed.
I found Garrett entirely by accident. In February 2026, I spent a Tuesday morning riding along with a Meals on Wheels volunteer route in Richmond, Virginia, reporting a separate story about food insecurity among senior households. The volunteer, a retired teacher named Claudette, mentioned almost in passing that one of the people on her extended contact list — not a recipient, just someone she checked in on — was a school bus driver having a hard time. “He won’t ask for anything,” she told me. “That’s the problem.” She gave me his number. He picked up on the second ring.
Three days later, I sat down with Garrett Norwood at his kitchen table in a modest three-bedroom house in the Northside neighborhood of Richmond. He was 58, broad-shouldered, with the careful stillness of someone who has learned not to move faster than necessary. His wife, Denise, was in the next room. She had been laid off from her position as a floor supervisor at a home goods retailer in November 2025 after the company closed two Virginia locations.
The Numbers Behind a “Stable” Life
Garrett has driven for Richmond City Public Schools since 2004. His base salary is approximately $38,400 per year — decent, he told me, but not expansive. For most of the past decade, Denise’s income from retail management, around $31,000 annually, kept the household comfortable. Not wealthy, but stable. They owned their home outright, having paid off the mortgage in 2021.
The third income stream was Garrett’s lawn care and light landscaping business, which he’d run on weekends and summers for 15 years. At its peak in 2022, it brought in close to $19,000 in a season. By 2024, that number had dropped to around $11,200. By the fall of 2025, with Garrett managing a worsening knee condition and a smaller client base, the business generated roughly $6,800 for the year.
“We never had much cushion,” Garrett told me, wrapping both hands around a coffee mug. “But we didn’t need one, because nothing ever really went wrong all at once.” Then everything went wrong all at once. Denise’s layoff hit in November. The lawn business had already wound down for the season. And the City of Richmond’s second-half property tax installment — $1,423 — came due in December, on top of a first installment they had quietly deferred from June.
Behind on Taxes, Behind on Everything
Virginia property taxes are assessed and collected at the local level, which means the rules and relief programs vary by jurisdiction. According to the Virginia Department of Taxation, localities are permitted — but not required — to offer tax relief programs for elderly and disabled homeowners. Richmond does have such a program, but Garrett didn’t know it existed until I mentioned it during our conversation.
The Richmond City real estate tax relief program for the elderly and disabled is income-capped. For 2025, households with a combined net income under $50,000 may qualify for a partial exemption or deferral on property taxes. Garrett’s 2024 combined income, before Denise’s layoff, came in at approximately $57,000 — just over the threshold. But with Denise’s income stopping in November 2025, their 2025 figure looks significantly different.
“I didn’t know there was a program,” Garrett said, his voice flat — not angry, just stating a fact. “I knew there were programs for people on welfare or social security. I didn’t think I was that kind of person.” He paused. “I’m still not sure I am.”
That sentence stayed with me. It captures something real about the population of Americans who fall between formal poverty and genuine stability — people who have worked their whole lives but whose safety nets are thinner than they realize.
The Disability Gap Nobody Explains
Garrett’s knee — the right one — has been the subject of two surgeries since 2018, the result of cumulative strain from decades of climbing in and out of a bus. After the second surgery in 2020, he was awarded a permanent partial disability rating through Virginia’s workers’ compensation system. His monthly disability benefit is $318.
His out-of-pocket medical costs — maintenance injections, a prescription anti-inflammatory, and physical therapy co-pays — run approximately $740 per month. That gap, roughly $422 each month, has been covered for years by absorbing it into the household budget. With the budget now compressed, there is nowhere left to absorb it.
Virginia workers’ compensation permanent partial disability awards are calculated using a statutory formula tied to the body part affected and the degree of impairment — they are not automatically adjusted for inflation or rising medical costs. Garrett’s attorney at the time of the 2020 award told him the number was “locked in.” He accepted that and moved on.
What Garrett didn’t know — and what I learned while reporting this piece — is that workers’ compensation recipients in Virginia may petition for a change in condition review if medical costs or disability status have materially changed. According to the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission, claimants have the right to file for a hearing on changed medical circumstances. Garrett had never been told this was an option.
What the Tax Return Revealed
One concrete turning point came in late February 2026, when Garrett finally filed his 2025 federal tax return — something he had been putting off because he dreaded seeing the numbers. He used the IRS Free File program through a VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) site in Richmond, which helped him identify two credits he hadn’t claimed in prior years.
The combined federal and state refund came to $1,847. It was not enough to clear the $2,847 property tax balance. But it was the first time in months Garrett had seen a number move in the right direction.
“I cried in the parking lot,” he told me. “That’s embarrassing to say, but I did. It wasn’t even that much money. It just felt like someone finally looked at my situation and said, yeah, this counts.”
Where Things Stand Now
When I last spoke with Garrett in late March 2026, the picture was mixed. Denise had applied for Virginia unemployment benefits and was receiving approximately $378 per week — less than half her former weekly earnings, but something. She was also applying for positions in distribution and logistics, where her supervisory experience translates.
The property tax balance had been reduced to roughly $1,000 after the refund was applied. Garrett had submitted an application to Richmond’s tax relief program for the 2026 tax year — based on 2025 income, which would fall well under the $50,000 threshold — but he acknowledged that wouldn’t resolve the current delinquency. The city had sent one formal notice. No lien had been filed yet.
The workers’ compensation review question remained unresolved. Garrett said he had called the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission and was told he would need to file a formal application to reopen his claim — a process he described as “sounding like a lot of paperwork for someone who works six days a week.” He hadn’t filed yet as of our last conversation.
According to the IRS EITC resources page, approximately one in five eligible taxpayers fails to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit each year. For someone in Garrett’s income range, that can mean leaving hundreds or even thousands of dollars unclaimed. The VITA network — free tax preparation sites for households earning under $67,000 — exists specifically to close that gap, and yet most people I speak with have never heard of it.
Garrett Norwood is not a dramatic case. He is not facing eviction or food insecurity. He is facing the quieter pressure of a life that was built carefully and is now straining at every joint — like his knee, he said, which hurts most not when he’s moving but when he stops. I left his kitchen thinking about all the people who never pick up the phone when a reporter calls, who manage their exhaustion privately and never stumble into the information they needed.
This story is not about whether the system worked for Garrett Norwood. It’s about how much he had to accidentally discover on his own — and how much may still be sitting unclaimed, waiting for a question he hasn’t thought to ask yet.
Vivienne Marlowe Reyes is Senior Tax & Stimulus Writer at American Relief. This article is reported narrative journalism and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.
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