Absolutely, but the idea of dropping munitions on a bass ackwards country and possibly invading is soo damn sexy, though!
Never mind things like this are going on, and to a guy who does your dirty work for you.
We should really be ashamed of this type of thing, but again, no one cares cause it ain't them.
This man a former Marine, look what he gets for his troubles. owed $134 in property taxes. The District sold the lien 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.
Suspicious bids go unnoticed in D.C.
District tax officials have made hundreds of mistakes in recent years by declaring property owners delinquent even after they paid their taxes, forcing them to fight for their homes. Coming Tuesday.
Live Q&A: Join the reporters at noon ET on Sept. 10 for a chat about the series. Submit questions here.
The retired Marine sergeant lost his house on that summer day two years ago through a tax lien sale ? an obscure program run by D.C. government that enlists private investors to help the city recover unpaid taxes.
For decades, the District placed liens on properties when homeowners failed to pay their bills, then sold those liens at public auctions to mom-and-pop investors who drew a profit by charging owners interest on top of the tax debt until the money was repaid.
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.
Coleman, struggling with dementia, was among those who lost a home. His debt had snowballed to $4,999 ? 37 times the original tax bill. Not only did he lose his $197,000 house, but he also was stripped of the equity because tax lien purchasers are entitled to everything, trumping even mortgage companies.
?This is destroying lives,? said Christopher Leinberger, a distinguished scholar and research professor of urban real estate at George Washington University.
Officials at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue said that without tax sales, property owners wouldn?t feel compelled to pay their bills.
?The tax sale is the last resort. It?s also the first resort ? it?s the only way in the statute to collect debt,? said deputy chief financial officer Stephen Cordi.
But the District, a hotbed for the tax lien industry, has done little to shield its most vulnerable homeowners from unscrupulous operators.
Foreclosures have upended families in some of the city?s most distressed neighborhoods. Houses were taken from a housekeeper, a department store clerk, a seamstress and even the estates of dead people. The hardest hit: elderly homeowners, who were often sick or dying when tax lien purchasers seized their houses.
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.?
Yep, we need to go fix some other countries problems, lord knows this is the land of milk and honey.