Posted on 05/04/2022 4:05:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
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.
An absolutely disgusting criminal practice.
A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything away from you.
Keep voting for the same people who tell you how much they love you at election time and put you back on the plantation all the rest of the election cycle.
“Although her debt was just $30,000, they sold her house for $242,000 and kept the difference.”
I will have to side with the Govt on this one. This is in Mass. Looks like she hadn’t paid her taxes for more than a few years.
This is what 2A is for.
This story is for all those out there who think if you pay off your mortgage you own your home.
If these bureaucrats keep this up you can be certain sooner or later one of their victims will go out with a bang,quite a few actually. On the bright side we can be sure they will blame the gun.
She was on a negotiated payment plan and one payment of that was not paid.
If no payment plan had been in force, then she would have purely appeared to have ignored all payments, as of that day, which would have been a different situation. Payment plans usually have high interest involved, so the county should have been making money, already:
Taking an asset without ownership is a crime. Banks take that which they own under foreclosure contract. Government does so by fiat, at its discretion.
Someone should take a real good look at what’s going on with land banks in NYS.
(hint, hint...)
Project Veritas: See above.
In the neck of the Upstate NY woods I live in, we know folks who live in existing homes valued at under 300 grand who have prop tax bills in the high four to low five figures annually.
And folks who’ve sold have had to sell at a loss (for below assessed value) because nobody wants to assume that prop tax burden.
Not paying taxes has consequences—and should follow due process. Very troubling that she attempted to pay and they refused—that is absolutely wrong. Same with keeping the excess value after selling for tax recovery. And the conflicts-of-interest and potential corruption of the government should be investigated.
More & more, it is starting to look as if this entire country is being run by various criminal enterprises. Hell, we know the federal government headquartered in Washington DC is a criminal enterprise and has been for decades. That rot has trickled down to the smallest towns and villages.
Sorry Dude but I cannot agree with you on this one. She was on a payment plan and yes, she had missed a few payments.
The part I disagree with is the state kept the difference in the proceeds from the home sale and the tax amount owed. That difference is her money.
Some legal beagle should be working to make her rich ... for 20% of course.
Nonsense. At worst, they should have given her the remainder. What’s a statist like you doing on a freedom website?
If she was already on a payment plan, she was well aware there was a problem paying her taxes. It should’ve come as no surprise that missing a payment would come with harsh penalties. I’m betting the paperwork she received upon entering the payment arrangement remained unread.
She should’ve sold the house, collected her equity...and rented.
But no...”I’m a victim.”
More on the government theft racket here:
https://pacificlegal.org/nursing-assistant-lost-home-michigans-home-equity-theft/
I have a LOT of money in savings.
The government just stole a large portion of it by ‘inflation’.
I (and you) will NEVER get this buying power back!
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