Left with nothing.
Written by Michael Sallah, Debbie Cenziper, Steven Rich
Graphics by Ted Mellnik, Emily Chow, Laura Stanton
Photos by Michael S. Williamson
Published on September 8, 2013
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.
HOMES FOR THE TAKING:
LIENS, LOSS AND PROFITEERS ? Part 1 of 3
Part 2: Suspicious bids go unnoticed in D.C.
Part 3: D.C. tax office mix-ups put homes in peril
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.
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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.
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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...
