Black homeowners in Detroit face new wave of foreclosures

Aljazeera

Tens of thousands of Detroit homeowners are facing possible foreclosure in the next year as the county cracks down on back taxes owed, which activists say are often extremely inflated because the county assesses property taxes on the basis of their value before the city fell into financial crisis.

When Wayne County officials opened the Cobo Center convention hall in early February to property owners hoping to work out payment plans to save their homes from tax foreclosure, more than 6,000 people streamed through the doors.

There was Krystal Malone, who finished up coursework to become a teacher just as the recession hit and is now underemployed as a substitute teacher and $9,000 behind on her taxes, even though her house is worth only about $10,000. There was Gabriel McNeil, who bought his house for $1,500 in 2013 without realizing it had nearly 10 times that owed in back taxes and is now trying to work out a plan with the city to pay that off. There was Brenda Johnson, whose aunt recently died, leaving her a house full of furniture and several thousand in taxes owed to the county.

“I just don’t want to get padlocks on my door and I can’t get my personal property out,” Johnson said. “I’m just trying to buy some time.”

Even though Cobo’s largest room was packed every day last week with people waiting to meet with county officials, the residents there represented only a fraction of the tens of thousands of occupied properties facing foreclosure by the county this year.

Each individual sitting in Cobo has a story as complex as the crisis that brought Detroit into the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

In November, when the city emerged from that bankruptcy and control was handed back to the city government from state-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr, things were looking up: the city’s debts were mostly settled, the population, after dropping precipitously for decades from a high of almost 2 million to fewer than 700,000, seemed to have leveled off — even increase a bit in the city’s core — and new businesses were moving downtown.