Guest Post by John Stossel
Did you know that in some states, if you miss one tax payment, local politicians will take your home, sell it and keep all the profits?
Really.
Tawanda Hall was behind on her taxes. She was on a payment plan but had missed $900. She didn’t expect Southfield, Michigan, to take her entire house because of that. It was worth $286,000 more than what she owed.
“I’m still in shock,” says Tawanda Hall in my new video. “They took my whole house, my whole family’s livelihood.”
John Bursch, a lawyer for the county, says while this practice may sound unfair (yes, it sure does), “It’s also unfair to force those who pay their taxes to subsidize those who don’t.”
“I pay taxes!” Hall responds. She works as a nursing assistant. “I lift people. I bathe people. I work hard.”
When Hall found out she was going to lose her home, she tried to pay off the debt.
“I went to the mayor’s office, I went down to the city county building,” she says. “They didn’t want our money. They said no.”
They wanted her house.
Taking it should be illegal.
“I think it’s unconstitutional,” says Christina Martin, senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. “The government can’t take more than it’s owed.”
The Foundation is suing local governments in six states for this type of home theft.
Martin won one case in Michigan’s supreme court. Oakland County had taken an entire home over an $8 debt.
Matthew Hodges, the county’s lawyer, argued, “There couldn’t be anything more fair than informing property owners of what is going to happen, giving them time to act and then letting them make an informed choice.”
Martin’s response: “Do you think if he knew he owed $8, he would have paid it? Of course! He didn’t know, and there wasn’t the proper incentive to let him know.”
In fact, the town has an incentive not to let him know. Officials rarely tell people: “Pay! Or we’ll take your home!” Towns that do this write notices in legalese: “a tax lien acquired under a certain Instrument of Taking from the Collector of Taxes for the city … said instrument of Taking covers a certain parcel of land … ”
Hall doesn’t remember receiving “anything other than, ‘Get out.'”
Despite the Michigan Supreme Court ruling, a judge dismissed Hall’s case because the government itself did not make the profit. In her case, the town gave her home to a private business. That business, the Southfield Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, sold the house and kept the money.
The business says it uses the town’s donations to maintain attractive, safe neighborhoods, protect and raise property values.
“Government shouldn’t be able to steal from its own people and then give it over to their friends,” says Martin.
I ask her how she knows Southfield Neighborhood Revitalization officials are “friends” of the politicians.
She replies, “The company is literally run by the mayor and the city administrator!”
I wanted to interview them. Neither would agree to talk to me.
I’m surprised how common this kind of government home theft is. If you are behind on taxes, even just $10 behind, 11 states allow local governments to sell your home and keep all its value.
In Massachusetts, a 66-year-old grandmother is “sleeping in her car right now,” says Martin. “The city took her property, turned around and sold it within days of evicting her.”
Although her debt was just $30,000, they sold her house for $242,000 and kept the difference.
The Pacific Legal Foundation has gotten three states to stop engaging in this home equity theft. Good.
Eleven more to go.
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Lol just now figuring out what property taxes are. Rent for the land you bought. That you really do not own. The government does.
and it goes up every friggin year
Did I miss the part about which states make up the 11 remaining?
Aren’t many of these tax liens owned by private citizens?
Proptax has always meant “ownership” by the so-called buyer & ownership by the tyranny. Word magicians, both sides the divide, are complicit in this fraud.
I looked into the r/e tax lien scam 40 years ago. Cash settlement auctions regularly held on the courthouse steps. A cabal with suitcases full of fiat scoop up most of it. And if there is anything the cabal wants that a non-cabal interloper has the temerity to bid on, cabal colludes to make sure that bidder’s hands remain empty & with no blood on them.
Dirty scummery, from all angles.
Should bee, but that colony collapsed before the ink dried on the insect-paper hive: Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos (Latin for “whoever’s is the soil, it is theirs all the way to Heaven and all the way to Hell”)
A country full of “gun nuts” and never any retribution against these thieves?
Kinda disproves that narrative quickly.
Seems like “mass shooters” only target completely innocent people.
Seems if we had a “gun violence ” problem, these thieving politicians would be first choice for the “gun nuts”.
Surely you’ve heard before that with 300 million guns and a trillion rounds of ammo in hand, if legal gun owners were a serious problem you would know it.
They are about to become a serious solution. You can feel it building, right?
If they tried that in Texas, I would burn down the house and the houses of all the people involved in the theft of my property. The corrupt judge dies as does the sheriff who comes to evict me. Civilization is a very thin veneer.
That’s the problem–these bureaucrats and politicians steal these properties with impunity and laugh while you try to take the city to court when living out of your car. Not only do the tax people and mayors who are in on the scam need to be dealt with, the vulture buyers need to be taken out too. Imagine the effect of someone whos property was stolen opening fire on the crowd of parasites bidding on his house. Imagine the county tax assessor’s car being bombed, or the scuzzy city lawyer found dead from a high powered rifle shot. Thin veneer indeed.
Who owns a registered car in the US? In Germany there’s a rumor, all you got is that green letter, “Fahrzeugbrief”.
Totally agree.
What profits a man to gain the world and lose his soul?
You know it’s true because it applies equally to both sides of the equation.
That having been said, there is a point where self defense comes into play. No one can be blamed for fighting for their life. It’s all they’ve ever really owned to begin with. I will not give mine away, nor will I sell it cheap.
In the old days, paper targets were kinda off white with black bullseyes and scoring rings. Now they are fluorescent and ‘register’ the shots. The martyrs are really standing out.
I dread the start of the end. Sri Lanka will be like the kiddie pool.
Never happier that i’m not a politician.
Praying certainly doesn’t hurt.
Got fed up with the “silent partner” so stopped doing home improvements around 2005. Since then have only been doing “keep it livable” repairs when necessary.
This isn’t going to work against everybody.
Funny thing, I just happened across this classic movie, ‘Captain Boycott’, late last night and stayed up way past my bedtime watching:
It reaffirms my mostly unfounded feelings of absolute panic whenever my landlord sends an email message (which is usually something innocuous) but triggers what I can only describe as ‘inherited’ fear from my Irish roots on my mother’s side. To add to the problem, my father’s (a WWII Purple Heart Marine) family had their house confiscated during the depression and re-rented back to them after the bank sold off all of the furniture, including the piano my pop had worked so hard to buy. Their only way out was to send my dad to the CCC’s where her mailed home $20 of the $25 dollars he made every month. Shortly after, he fought in Guadalcanal but refused to take more than 50% disability after being seriously wounded by machine gun because he wanted to work, which he did until age 80. Whatever have we done to their legacy? I’m convinced klaus butt schwab and his ilk waited for that generation to die off or they’d have never pulled this BS.
Was the home owned outright, or did a bank hold a note on the property? People live in homes they “claim” they own, but the bank records indicate something else entirely. In such a case, a good portion (or all) of the auction would have to go to the lender on the property once the tax obligation was covered.
Doesn’t leave much for the home “owner”, does it?