I'm reading Davarian Baldwin's In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, a study in the extractive relationship between universities and their surrounding neighborhoods. One of the ways universities extract wealth is their failure to pay property taxes, even as the largest landowner.

Because universities don't pay any property tax, the bigger their footprint gets and more property that comes under their control, the fewer taxes the community can collect. When the University of Michigan purchased the Pfizer plant '08 the city lost $13 million in tax revenue.

For more on this financial loss, see: https://www.michigandaily.com/uncategorized/pfizer-shut-a2-facility/

In Ann Arbor, the failure to pay property tax means egregiously high taxes for individual homeowners and wildly increasing housing costs. This is passed on to renters, in the form of high rents. In turn, this pushes out low-income people from Ann Arbor.

One of the ways to force universities to pay their fair share has been "Payment in Lieu of Taxes" (PILOT). For example, activists have demanded Yale pay their fair share to New Haven, CT. Others have tried to get University of Chicago to pay PILOT fees.

So, question: does anyone know of this initiative at public universities? It seems the first step is to calculate how much the University *does not* pay in taxes. In other words, how much does the University cost the community?

@DavarianBaldwin might you know of PILOT initiatives at public universities? Especially one with a $12.4 billion endowment?