Left With Nothing
Published on Counter Information/J. PEREZ’ blog, by Michael Sallah, Debbie Cenziper, Steven Rich, Sept. 8, 2013.
(Photo) … This man owed $ 134 in property taxes. The district sold the liden to an investor who foreclosed on his $ 197′000 house and sold it. He and many other homeowners like him were LEFT WITH NOTHING.
… On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.
Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered. By sundown, he had nowhere to go.
All because he didn’t pay a $134 property tax bill … //
… But under the watch of local leaders, the program has morphed into a predatory system of debt collection for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay, a Washington Post investigation found.
As the housing market soared, the investors scooped up liens in every corner of the city, then started charging homeowners thousands in legal fees and other costs that far exceeded their original tax bills, with rates for attorneys reaching $450 an hour.
Families have been forced to borrow or strike payment plans to save their homes.
Others weren’t as lucky. Tax lien purchasers have foreclosed on nearly 200 houses since 2005 and are now pressing to take 1,200 more, many owned free and clear by families for generations.
Investors also took storefronts, parking lots and vacant land — about 500 properties in all, or an average of one a week. In dozens of cases, the liens were less than $500 … //
… But the District, a hotbed for the tax lien industry, has done little to shield its most vulnerable homeowners from unscrupulous operators … //
… One 65-year-old flower shop owner lost his Northwest Washington home of 40 years after a company from Florida paid his back taxes — $1,025 — and then took the house through foreclosure while he was in hospice, dying of cancer. A 95-year-old church choir leader lost her family home to a Maryland investor over a tax debt of $44.79 while she was struggling with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home.
Other cities and states took steps to curb abuses, such as capping the fees, safeguarding houses owned by the elderly or scrapping tax sales altogether and instead collecting the money themselves.
“Where is the justice? They’re taking people’s lives,” said Beverly Smalls, whose elderly aunt lost her home in Northeast Washington. “It’s just not right.”
(full text).
(my comment: this is not only economic pornography, the biggest crime is, this happens in a so-called Christian nation … and what about the trillions of depts this gov is making??? – Heidi).
This article appears also: on Information Clearing House and on The Washington Post;
Links:
Annual Real Property Tax Sale, on The District of Columnbia;
Money and government debt in the Eurozone (and the UK), on Real-World Economics Review RWER Blog, by merijhknibbe, Sept 8, 2013 – see graph.