Have You Paid Your Detroit Property Taxes? Think Again

Have you paid your past due City of Detroit property taxes and received a receipt that shows you are current, with an outstanding balance of $0.00?

Were you granted the poverty exemption, replete with a classification code, and received a statement that your property taxes were at $0.00?

Did you submit application and were granted by the State of Michigan for assistance in paying past due property taxes, in full?

Is your State Equalized Value (SEV) set at $0.00 by the City of Detroit?

Well, think again!

It seems like those wiley "Legal Geniuses" (trademark pending) over at the Detroit Land Bank Authority and the City of Detroit are at it again.

Over the last week or so, Wayne County sent via certified mail, at the cost of about $6.70 , I am pulling a number out of the air in relation to what I know because I do not feel like constructing a verifiable formula based upon public information, on the low end, I am going to conservatively claim about 15,000 notices of tax foreclosures to residents of the City of Detroit, and leave myself open to correction.

$6.70 x 15,000 = $100,500.00

This amount does not include Detroit administrative fees to transfer the collection activities to its strong arm collection agency called Wayne County.

Of course, at this point, one is asking, "But I thought my delinquent property taxes were paid!?!"

You did pay your property taxes, it is just that the "Legal Geniuses" (trademark pending) and the crew are still at it... stealin'.

See, the City of Detroit privatized trash collection.

Switch to Private Trash Collection on West Side Begins June 2

Both contracts are for five years with five, one-year renewal options and are for solid waste collection only. Disposal of waste will continue to be provided through the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Authority.  Rizzo will service 90,000 households, and its contract will not exceed $49.1 million.  The contract with Advanced Disposal will not exceed $73.5 million, and the company will serve 125,000 households. The annual cost for both contracts is $24.5 million.  Contractors will be paid out of funds generated from the City’s Solid Waste Fund.  Residents now pay $240 per year for all solid waste services.

I am quite sure, at this point, there are those who are saying, "Just pay the fee.".

The fee is incorporated into the City tax bill, or, one would assume it is in the tax bill, but it is not, or it may be, but who knows because when you look it up from the privatized off-site, the tax information database, it not only has erroneous information, but it shows that there are no outstanding taxes.

The point is that this mysterious fee is not on the tax bill because it is a fee.

Fees are not taxes so why are they being processed as a mechanism for property tax foreclosure after people have been formally notified that their tax bills are current by the City of Detroit?

I am calling this a back pocket foreclosure to steal more properties for the Detroit Land Bank Authority.

Hold on, it gets better.

Where is the due process?

By this I mean, how is it a fee can be placed as a lein, I am going to assume it is a lein, without any opportunity to challenge, like with a notification and a court hearing to challenge, or in this instance, verify, because I cannot find any records for this discrepency for property tax foreclosure.

I am not finished.

The "fee-tax-lein" according to the City site, indicates that the fee is $240.00, but the "fee-tax-lein" foreclosure notice and Wayne County Treasurer site shows the amount delinquent, not subject to foreclosure, is $190.40, with interest and fees of $45.47, for a total of $235.87, which is not $240.00 as stated by the City.

So, where did they come up with these numbers and where does the money go?

Almost done, just bare with me.

Rizzo Environmental Services is currently under federal investigation.

I have no comment on the Advanced Disposal contract, yet.

As to the United Community Housing Coalition, Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA), and Michigan Homeowner Assistance Nonprofit Housing Corporation , I have no comment at this time, but stay tuned, I will explain why the TARP - Hardest Hit Funds - Michigan Step Foward Program  keeps denying people property tax foreclosure assistance, later.

It is now later:  They were stealin'!!!!!!!!

So, yes, government can stop tax foreclosures, but it looks like it is going the be the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Treasury to make them stop stealing'.

Michele Oberholtzer, "Tag, you're it."

And always remember, #perkinscoiesucks

Government can stop tax foreclosure | Guest column

Michele Oberholtzer is director of the
Tax Foreclosure Prevention Project at the
United Community Housing Coalition.
She is running for state House. 

If you’re anything like me, you feel a little sick when you hear that yet another 36,000 Detroit properties are facing tax foreclosure this year. Tax foreclosure is an autoimmune disorder through which our own local government has become the agent of its own destruction. The city, county and state all have a role in carrying out tax foreclosure, but they also have the ability to end it. Government can stop government foreclosure.

Unleashing the #Superfans

The first priority must be to preserve homeownership. The most obvious solution for retaining homeowners is to use the federal funds already allocated for foreclosure prevention to actually prevent foreclosure, at no cost to local government.

Each year, the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, (MSHDA) “Step Forward” program denies assistance to hundreds of applicants who ultimately lose their homes to tax foreclosure. Meanwhile, the funds go unused. MSHDA requirements are too judgmental, stringent and unreasonable for worthy homeowners to qualify, and the application period is too short. Local government could work with MSHDA to better utilize its foreclosure prevention money for Detroit homeowners, and to increase this funding by returning demolition funds for their original purpose.

Another solution involves the expansion of the so-called “poverty exemption,” which waives taxes for Michigan homeowners with low incomes. This exemption could be extended on a retroactive basis (as with income taxes and the “principal residence exemption”).  A retroactive poverty exemption could annul foreclosures for hundreds or thousands of at-risk Detroit homeowners who are losing their houses for taxes that they could have had waived.

At-risk homeowners need better payment plans. State law limits Wayne County’s options for reducing interest and debt, and over-assessed delinquent tax bills increase at 18% interest each year.

One option is the so-called “SEVSPA” plan, a plan that cuts tax debt to half the State Equalized Value. This existed under a 2015 law passed with the support of Mayor Duggan, but it was only available temporarily at a time when property assessments across Detroit were still chronically over-inflated. We need more common-sense payment plans that reduce debt to some value proportionate to the home’s property value or the owner’s ability to pay.

Use power for good

ROR is the opportunity of local government to buy properties from the Wayne County Treasurer before they are auctioned. In 2017, Detroit used the ROR to preserve occupied residential programs for the first time. Eighty homes were protected from auction and the residents (those who were not former owners)  had an opportunity to purchase the home they already lived in for prices ranging from $2,000 to $5,000. If this program was expanded to include all occupied foreclosed homes, this would mean that 2,000 homes might be diverted from the grips of foreclosure onto a common-sense affordable path to homeownership.

Most auctioned properties are sold individually, but through “bundling,” properties are clustered together. Large bundles are expensive so this is a method of preventing homes from being purchased in auction. For each of the past four auctions, the Wayne County Treasurer has bundled thousands of properties — mostly vacant land or vacant homes — which ended up at the Detroit Land Bank Authority with other unsold auction stock. Any occupied homes that could not otherwise be saved from foreclosure could be bundled and transitioned to the ownership of their current resident, if any of the government entities involved chose to do so.

Thousands of occupied homes could be lost to foreclosure this year, or not. After years of crisis, Detroit seems to have reached a state of shock that allows us to accept unacceptable self-destructive practices. So much has been lost that it seems impossible to lose any more, but resurgence is not inevitable — we must become the agents of our own betterment.  Government foreclosure is a terrible threat but it is also one of the greatest opportunities for redemption that Detroit has, if we chose to use it.

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