I missed this - Detroit about 1/6 of the population goes into tax forclosure (Mother Jones)

[salin]

Detroit Just Had the Single Largest Tax Foreclosure in American History

As many as 100,000 of the city's residents—about a seventh of the total number—are now on track for what many are calling an eviction "conveyor belt."

—By Laura Gottesdiener
| Tue Apr. 21, 2015 4:01 PM EDT

Unlike so many industrial innovations, the revolving door was not developed in Detroit. It took its first spin in Philadelphia in 1888, the brainchild of Theophilus Van Kannel, the soon-to-be founder of the Van Kannel Revolving Door Company. Its purpose was twofold: to better insulate buildings from the cold and to allow greater numbers of people easier entry at any given time.

On March 31st at the Wayne Country Treasurer's Office, that Victorian-era invention was accomplishing neither objective. Then again, no door in the history of architecture—rotating or otherwise—could have accommodated the latest perversity Detroit officials were inflicting on city residents: the potential eviction of tens of thousands, possibly as many as 100,000 people, all at precisely the same time.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/low-income-black-and-elderly-residents-detroit-isnt-city-rise-one-under-siege


...
Few care to admit, however, that the city that was the arsenal of the twentieth century may also provide the blueprint for a more precarious era. Which brings us to those massive tax foreclosures of the present moment. Just over 60,000 homes, about half of them occupied, are slated for the auction block. As many as 100,000 of the city's residents—about a seventh of the total number—are now on track for what many are calling an eviction "conveyor belt."

Such an image easily springs to mind in this city whose auto factories were famous for their oh-so-efficient shop floors. These days, sadly enough, it's all-too-easy to imagine a twenty-first-century version of a classic Detroit assembly line dedicated to processing its own residents, workers, and retirees—all the ones it claims to no longer need, all those too old, too young, too ill-trained, too inefficient for a post-bankruptcy city. These undesirables, it seems, are to be turned into so many economic refugees on a conveyor belt to nowhere. While everyone loves to hear about legendary industrial Detroit, no one wants to hear about its de-industrialized progeny, and especially not about foreclosures—not again.


I missed earlier discussions - any Michigan folks able to weigh in? How does a city evict 100000 people? What happens with all the additional abandoned homes? Where do 100,000 evicted folks go?

In the early years of DU I would go round and round with another DUer (difference of opinion per issues that were dearest to each of our hears) - and I kept coming back to Detroit. I worked there in the early 90s. It was then a city in the throes of a multidecade crisis. I was seeing other cities seem to get to where Detroit was back then (in the 2000s - especially post recession). As a country if we can't figure out what to do to save Detroit - and to care about it's citizens - we are in deep denial - a I still think it is a canary in the coal mine for urban cities in the rustbelt (and elsewhere).

Last year - turning off utilities. Now ... mass evictions? Horrifying.

[WillyT]

1. HUGE K & R !!! - THANK YOU !!!

[1939]

2. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization

Detroit (my hometown) is just emerging from bankruptcy. To avoid another trip through the courts, the city must pay its bills going forward. The city relies on a city income tax and a property tax to pay its bills. Too many property owners (not just the jobless but the slumlords and the major building owners as well) treat paying property taxes (and water bills) as optional. Where should the money come from to keep the city going?

[salin]

5. wow. Your third sentence blows me away.

for the jobless - or the chronically underemployed/short shifts/low wage - I understand that folks make choices on which bills to pay. That was true when i worked there, and it is true where I work now - where a number of the families I work with are very transient due to poverty. But what you are describing is not just the desperate - but also the major building owners and slum lords (I guess the latter isn't such a surprise.) I wonder how it got to that point?

You also have a much smaller tax base than when I lived there, and I would venture to guess that more than a bit of used land/building are non-taxed (not profit such as govt., schools, churches, etc.)

But what happens when you further decrease occupancy in neighborhoods? 20+ years ago there were on average 3 abandoned houses on every block in the city. I wonder what that is now? And what it will be if truly 1/6 of the population is displaced.

I don't have answers - but I would suggest that our country should stop debating whether employers can fire folks for using birth control (read that a couple of days ago) - and start figuring out how to raise greater revenues in order to invest in infrastructure and new industries (Keynesian economic policies) in order to rebuild working micro economies. Otherwise I really fear that Detroit is a harbinger for the future of many US cities.

[csziggy]

7. How is evicting tens of thousands of people going to pay the bills?

If the city allows (or forces) eviction of tens of thousand of people, making them homeless, how is that going to help the city?

Once the city forecloses on those houses, what are they going to do with the empty structures? Detroit is already filled with empty houses available for purchase for very little, so real estate speculators are unlikely to rush in to bail the city out. If the city throws all those people out, who is going to maintain those houses? They will just be more moldering buildings decreasing property values that are already at rock bottom.

[1939]

14. I agree, but it is a real dilema

The problem is that the city relaxes on those truly unable to pay so everybody finds there are no consequences for not paying and doesn't pay either. Detroit Water and Sewer Department (DWSD) has a very low rate of collection of water bills in the city. People are notoriously lax about paying property tax in the city. Income tax on residents and nonresidents they can collect because it gets deducted at paycheck time, but it just isn't enough.

[Cal Carpenter]

3. Yeah, it is unbelievable. 80 years ago, a moratorium was implemented

and it could be again. It is a very interesting piece of history, one I learned in detail at the US Social Forum in 2010, at a session led by Jerry Goldberg who is quoted in the OP article:

"No!" Goldberg shouted yet again. "We need to stop these foreclosures with a moratorium, a halt! The idea that this can't be done is hogwash! The Supreme Court held in 1934 that, during a period of emergency, the people's need to survive supersedes any financial contract! The governor has a responsibility to declare a state of emergency!"

His sentences all ended in exclamation points, as his torrent of words resounded off the church's high ceilings. In an upside-down universe, Goldberg would have made a skilled auctioneer rather than a man desperate to save all those homes and their inhabitants.

To be clear, Goldberg isn't suggesting another of the emergency proclamations that Michigan's governors have used to impose unelected emergency managers on school districts and municipalities from Detroit to Muskegon Heights. Rather, he's calling for the governor to declare a state of emergency under Michigan law 10.31, which would allow him to "promulgate reasonable orders, rules, and regulations as he or she considers necessary to protect life and property"—including, of course, halting the tax foreclosures. In 1933, similar actions allowed Michigan's legislature to pass the Mortgage Moratorium Act, later upheld by the Supreme Court, mandating a five-year halt on property foreclosures.

Winning that moratorium took, among other things, a well-organized national Communist Party, hundreds of worker councils, thousands of eviction blockades, and—I'd be willing to bet, although I don't have the archival evidence—an incredible number of "emergency meetings."

This myth that we are moving forward somehow has to be dismissed. We are going backwards and no amount of rhetoric will change that, these people who are seeing the results of our regression first hand... There are some pretty cool things going on in Detroit, but most of its 'recovery', like the rest of the nation, is trickling UP to to the ownership class.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. why evict? so many unsold empty houses.

[haele]

6. All about the tax base. Unsold empty houses aren't being bought.

Mainly because most of them are in an unlivable condition. By evicting residents who are (supposedly) able to otherwise maintain their home, even if they can't pay property taxes and are paying utilities every other month or so because there aren't enough living wage - or even minimum wage - jobs to provide a standard of living, the city probably hopes to recoup some of the monies owed.

Or get the resident of those houses to pay - this year.

Even if the kids go hungry and their utilities get shut off until the resident can recoup the money they beg, borrowed, or stole to be able to pay the couple hundred in taxes for the property they are living at.

However, I doubt they will get much more money this year auctioning off those 1-in-7 houses that are seriously overdue paying their taxes than they will spend evicting the residents, even if they are going to. This would be like the city collecting only five cents on every dollar owed - if they can sell the house or property. If not, they end up with just another property without a resident they have to spend money on to maintain until some developer comes in with a plan to level the neighborhood and build some new foreign investment scam "high income condo project" up in its place - and soak both the taxpayers and the investors for as long as they can with equally un-inhabited project buildings.

Heck, they can't even re-develop the unsold abandoned properties they have on the books now.

Haele

[csziggy]

8. Part of it is that they want to get rid of low income areas

And change the water flow (from the article linked in the OP):

Perhaps I should have led with this information: in some of the city's latest flashy Adobe InDesign-ed planning documents, certain of Detroit's more down-and-out neighborhoods have been transformed into ponds. Or, to be more precise, they have been turned into "water retention basins" that planners believe will offer the Detroit of the future superior management of storm water runoff.

Minutes earlier, Alice Jennings, one of the most celebrated social justice lawyers in the city, had explained that, according to Detroit's planning documents, those retention basins are slated to be built on top of now populated neighborhoods. In other words, ponds are also what we're talking about when we talk about Detroit's tax foreclosures.

Do parts of Detroit flood on a regular basis? Are retention ponds needed to control the water?

[salin]

10. I worked in two parts of the city years ago. I don't recall regular or even episodic flooding.

but retention ponds are standard in new housing developments.

[csziggy]

11. I figured that was probably the case

Here in Tallahassee they did have an area that flooded badly. Once the houses in that neighborhood were badly damaged the city purchased several blocks and put in a retention pond. There was a lot of controversy since it was in a traditionally black neighborhood, but the city worked with the community. They put money into the area and now the homes there are in much better condition and the commercial area if flourishing.

[MrScorpio]

9. A glimpse of Anerica's future. nt

[Taitertots]

12. Can I buy one for pennies on the dollar...

And just give it back to the previous owner?

[1939]

15. You can

But next year his property taxes and water bills will come due again and you have just delayed the inevitable.

[Starry Messenger]

13. k&r