By Nathan Metcalf, Special to the Reporter
A Dorchester health center says it is owed nearly $35,000 in back property-tax reimbursements from T-Mobile for a rooftop antenna on its building. It’sa dispute that real estate attorneys and telecommunications specialists say reflects a broader, largely hidden problem affecting hundreds of small landlords, nonprofits, and churches across Boston.
The Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center hosts T-Mobile equipment on its roof on Blue Hill Avenue,earning about $2,000 per month in rent. Under the terms of the lease, the wireless carrier is also required to reimburse the landlord for property taxes attributable to the site of the placement.
But the health center has paid those taxes itself for four years without reimbursement, according to AirWave Lease Insights, a Lincoln company that analyzes wireless leases and, for a fee, helps property owners fight for their claims.
Harvard Street president and CEO Charles “Charley” Murphy said he was “surprised that cell tower companies conduct themselves this way.” He emphasized that the center simply wants the carrier to meet its obligations. “If they owe the money, they should pay it,” he said.
Neither T-Mobile nor its attorneys responded to The Reporter’s repeated requests to discuss the matter.
“Our role is to serve the underserved with medical services,” Murphy said. “We have family medicine, primary care, dental services, behavioral health services, a veterans center, a food bank — and we serve over 10,000 people, probably 12,000 or 13,000 a year.”
While Harvard Street is still waiting on a response, the experience of another Dorchester institution — a house of worship — shows what it can take for a small property owner to get its reimbursements.
A near foreclosure
Global Ministries Christian Church, at Washington Street and Welles Avenue, leased space inside its steeple to T-Mobile beginning in 2003. In 2008, the church sold the future rent stream to a company called Ulysses for a one-time payment of $216,660, meaning it no longer collected monthly rent from the carrier. For years, the arrangement appeared uneventful.
At some point — the exact date is unclear from court filings — the city reclassified the steeple as a separate taxable parcel and began assessing real estate taxes on the income value created by the antenna. Under the lease, those taxes were the responsibility of T-Mobile, not the church.
But the church didn’t know the bills existed. The city was mailing them to an address the church had never used, and postal records show they were repeatedly returned as undeliverable. As the years passed, interest and penalties quietly accumulated. By 2024 the antenna had been removed.
According to Steve Kropper, the CEO of AirWaveLease Insights, T-Mobile “removed their gear… once the problem became visible — we think, to evade paying the tax.” By the time of the removal, the outstanding balance had grown to nearly $188,000, prompting the city to place a lien on the church property and raising the risk of foreclosure.
The attorney and former Boston City Councillor Larry DiCara, who has practiced real estate law for decades and has long known the church’s pastor, Rev. Bruce Wall, said the situation illustrates how easily small nonprofits can be blindsided.
“Most people don’t even know the concept,” he said. “Life is complicated enough without having to worry about stuff like this. He’s a preacher — he’s in the job of saving souls, not trying to figure out reimbursements for real property taxes.”
The church received its first tax bill in May 2023 and soon turned to AirWave Lease Insights for help. The firm prepared a detailed claim package showing that, under the lease and standard industry practice, T-Mobile was required to reimburse the church for those taxes, and sent it to T-Mobile. When T-Mobile did not make the payment, the church filed a lawsuit alleging unfair and deceptive practices and breach of the reimbursement clause.
“T-Mobile is notorious for failing and refusing to pay taxes accrued as a result of the installation of its telecommunications equipment upon leased properties throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and beyond, resulting in oppressive tax debts crippling small businesses and charitable organizations,” the lawsuit states.
After months of negotiations, the church and T-Mobile reached a settlement in July of this year, with the company agreeing to pay the full balance to the city. A recent tax statement reviewed by The Reporter shows the account now listed at zero.
“These are what we were taught as kids were ‘sins of omission,’” DiCara said of the broader issue. “I don’t see a bunch of people… sitting around in fancy clothes, drinking champagne, laughing about this, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. They have a moral obligation, if not a legal obligation, to be more forthcoming about these things.”
A hidden, citywide problem
AirWave’s Kropper said cases like Global Ministries’ and Harvard Street’s are far from isolated.
According to AirWave research, some 400 Boston properties have rooftop antennas, generating an estimated real estate tax number of $7 million per year. About 75 percent of leases require reimbursement by the wireless carriers — but AirWave estimates 95 percent of owners never file claims that amount to millions of unrecovered dollars.
The Reporter contacted the city of Boston several times over a two-week period in an effort to independently verify these figures. City officials responded but ultimately did not provide the information requested.
Kropper said many property owners have no idea the tax even exists. Boston doesn’t tax the equipment itself; it taxes the income value created by the antenna in place — and the charge never appears as its own line item. Instead, he said, it’s folded into the overall property assessment, “there’s no line that says ‘cell tax,’” which makes it easy to miss.
For landlords who signed leases a decade or more ago, the reimbursement clause covering those taxes can be just a short sentence buried inside a 40-page lease, further obscuring the obligation.
In the church’s case, the city’s misaddressed mail compounded the problem. In Harvard Street’s case, the health center became aware of the tax only after AirWave alerted it.
The reimbursement gap persists because many carriers pay only when pressed, Kropper said.
“T-Mobile’s approach has basically been: Don’t ask, won’t pay,” he said. “If you don’t know to claim the tax, they’re not going to volunteer it.”
Furthermore, he said, carriers invariably deny reimbursement even when requests are filed. “One hundred percent of the time when we [AirWave Insights] file a claim, it gets rejected the first time around,” he said.
Harvard Street’s ongoing battle
The reimbursement Harvard Street is claiming — $34,945 across four years — is modest compared with Global Ministries’ near-foreclosure. But Murphy said the principle is the same. The health center serves one of Boston’s lowest-income neighborhoods; even small funding gaps matter.
Wireless Asset Slice, an affiliated claims entity of AirWave, filed a 15-page reimbursement request with T-Mobile for the health center in February of this year. The package included tax bills, lease provisions, and calculations showing that the health center had paid taxes attributable to T-Mobile’s antenna.
T-Mobile, through its attorneys, argued in a June letter that the company was not obligated to pay, raising three defenses: that the claim had not been filed in a timely manner; that T-Mobile reserved the right to challenge assessments; and that reimbursing the tax would constitute “double taxation” because the company already pays personal property tax on its equipment.
Kropper called those arguments “specious.” He said the leading precedent — a 2013 New York case, T-Mobile Northeast LLC v. DeBellis — rejected the double-taxation claim and held that personal-property taxes on equipment and real-property taxes on income value are legally distinct.
Kropper disputed the “timely notice” argument, saying the lease contains no filing deadline and that the health center submitted its request “as soon as [it] became aware” of the tax.”
“We take as guidance the statute of limitations in Massachusetts providing for six years’ worth of reimbursement. That’s the relevant law here,” he said. “They raise these points hoping landlords don’t know the history. And often they don’t.”
A call for transparency
The issue reflects a power imbalance between providers and property owners, DiCara said. “The city collects what it’s owed, owners should recover what they are owed, and carriers should shoulder their fair share,” he said. “Problems like this shouldn’t be swept under the rug.”
To that point, Murphy said the episode makes clear how unprepared most nonprofits are for the reimbursement process. “I didn’t know this existed,” he said. “Once it was brought to our attention, we wanted to pursue it, because it’s owed to the community.” As of this week, Harvard Street had not received the reimbursement.
AirWave believes that the more than 400 Boston property owners cited above may be missing out on similar payments. Kropper said that reality helps explain why carriers resist even small claims. Carriers routinely push back on them, he argued, because widespread reimbursement could expose them to millions in overdue payments across Boston.
“That’s the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
