
Man Loses Home After Failing to Pay $8.41 in Property Taxes - TakakiTohno
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2019/12/06/man-loses-home-after-failing-to-pay-841-in-property-taxes/#9abe2d32a207
======
rexgallorum2
One of the more important yet most overlooked and misunderstood features of
American government and governance is the fact that a vast amount of power
resides at the very bottom, and local officials often have discretionary
powers that would be vested in higher level officials in other countries. This
is a good thing in many respects, but the other side of the coin is that you
have totally incompetent yokels wielding the power of petty kings.

The case in question is an absolute disgrace and an excellent example of the
failings of the American system of government in its present state of
(dys)function. I would argue that it should be much, much harder to evict
people for any reason, and that seizing private property for trivial reasons
should be near impossible. Many here would agree, but in this specific case it
is purely a local matter.

Sub/exurban Detroit cannot be compared to Singapore. And the problem has
little to do with global population or overpopulation, but it is curiously
linked to population density. Jürgen Habermas and others have written
extensively about the phenomenon of 'Verrechtlichung' or 'juridification',
i.e. the process by which an ever increasing amount of human interaction and
social and economic life is subjected to legal regulation and codification,
corresponding roughly to increases in population density that came with
urbanisation, industrialisation, and the advent of urban modernity from the
late 19th century on. But that is really not directly related to the given
issue exept in a rather abstract way.

~~~
bb88
So what can Americans do differently?

1\. Coalesce power to the top assuming that those people are more intelligent
and deserving of control?

No. That's how authoritarianism starts.

2\. Remove the power to seize private property?

No. Because that's seen as an effective deterrent against crime. You can't
have drug dealers putting their cash into untouchable multi million dollar
homes.

3\. More checks and balances on local governments to not abuse their power?

Yes. This is how it's always been done, and will continue to be done in the
future. There's the state and federal court systems which can provide relief.
There's also state and federal legislators. There's also the free press which
can illuminate these issues. Lastly there's elections. If you don't like the
way someone has run government, you can vote them out.

~~~
rexgallorum2
1\. Not exactly, no. The opposite of a federal state is a unitary state (like
France or Ireland), not an authoritarian state (like Saudi Arabia).
Interestingly, what you described (moving power upward) has been another major
feature of American governance since the early post-war era.

2\. I generally disagree with regards to the seizure of property. You say that
the seizure of criminal assets is seen as an effective crime deterrent. Who
sees it as such? Is there any evidence that it works? Are you familiar with
the debates surrounding 'civil forfeiture'? If not, it is worth looking into.
There are jurisdictions in the US(primarily at the municipal and county level)
that derive a large part of their total operating budgets from the seizure of
'criminal' assets without any sort of due process. The example of drug
kingpins parking their money in real estate is a particularly lurid and
unrepresentative example--there might indeed be a place for criminal asset
forfeiture in the fight against organized crime--but at the very least the
threshold should be rather high and not include petty infractions or minor
unpaid debts.

3\. I see your point here, and you are correct on checks and balances, but I
think you are naive with regards to the role of the press and the efficacy of
simply voting out incumbent officials. Having said that, I will concede that
the strategy actually works best at the lowest possible tier of government,
but of course that requires adequate civic engagement in local politics.

More on the free press issue. Here's a story for you. In the early 1970s, my
dad worked for a couple of local newspapers in the southern US. They would
send him to cover city council meetings. He commented that the reporters from
the big papers would show up for about 10 minutes and leave, and then write
reports as if they had been present the entire time. And that was yearly 50
years ago, when the American newspaper landscape looked very different from
today. Today most of those local papers are gone altogether and the press in
general has undergone a total transformation. Beyond the occasional outrage
story, I wouldn't automatically assume that the press is going to do its job.

Please don't take offense at my comments and fire back an angry rebuttal. This
is not meant as criticism of you or your positions. Just thoughts and debate,
nothing more.

~~~
bb88
1\. What you're saying is true. But in the US, the term "Imperial Presidency"
is used to describe the scenario when checks and balances fail between the
three branches, thus the power primarily resides in the executive branch to
make decisions, and with little oversight from the other branches.

Once there is no more legislative or judicial oversight, and the president can
choose to make every action classified, then it might as well be an
authoritarian system.

2\. > Who sees it as such?

The US's political establishment and law enforcement agencies.

Let's be clear about what I am for and what I am not.

There's two types of property seizure in the US:

A: Property seized directly as the result of a crime (cars used to transport
drugs, houses used to store or manufacture drugs, bank accounts used to store
proceed from drug transactions, etc.)

B: Property seized merely as being suspect to being involved in a crime. So
called civil forfeiture. These are the weird cases like "US vs. $5000".

I'm all for A, but against B. And if you say you can no longer seize bank
accounts or houses of convicted drug dealers, then that's a non-starter in the
US.

3\. The framers of the constitution never put an article describing the role
of the free press. Nor was the free press an original guarantee of the
constitution. That came later with the first amendment. It was the final check
on government corruption and overreach.

There's lots of national coverage on the Russia-Gate stories, but the local
news doesn't have the resources to cover city-council coverup for a 1500
person town anymore. It's a shame, I agree because the people in the 1500
person town deserve just as strong a protection as those that live in NYC. But
if you have a political party that attacks the media as being "partisan",
people are going to stop subscribing to the local newspapers, because they're
"partisan-by-default".

------
klipt
Meanwhile in San Francisco, some rich assholes that failed to pay property tax
for _decades_ got the tax sale of their street reversed years after it
happened: [https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/28/rich-san-francisco-
ho...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/28/rich-san-francisco-homeowners-
get-sold-off-street-back/)

Different rules for the rich as always.

~~~
kqr2
From the article, they actually defaulted on it twice and got it back both
times:

It marks the second time the association has defaulted, but it won back the
street in 1985 after paying up.

------
OnlineGladiator
I just wonder how many unfair (and in this case, quite frankly bullshit)
collisions there are codified in law that we rarely encounter. I don't believe
the laws are perfect, or that they even can be perfect (especially since
you're often catering to different groups with conflicting interests, and
oftentimes more than just two). But as our populations grow, our bureaucracies
slow, and more and more problems like this will manifest. I fear it's going to
become more like trying to argue your case against Google for why your YouTube
video was taken down without explanation - tough shit, good luck.

I have an unfounded fear that overpopulation is humanity's greatest threat,
and I think we're way past capacity.

~~~
eru
Are you talking about global overpopulation, or overpopulation in particular
countries or cities?

Globally, we have more than enough to eat. And apart from the US exporting
it's legal system everywhere (see
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-
everywhere-is-securities-fraud)), there's not too many spillover effects in
terms of laws from one place to another.

When looking at different locales, generally denser places are more desirable.
Hence their land rents and prices are higher. After taking higher rents into
account, it's a mostly a wash and down to personal preferences---but that just
tells you that the prices are mostly in line with reality.

Compare
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration)

About laws: that's one of the reasons we have human judges. As for perfection:
for most purposes laws first and foremost have to be predictable in their
effect. (Which this one here apparently was not in practice in this case.)

One of the densest countries on earth, Singapore, has one of the most
efficient legal systems, especially in that regard.

~~~
ethanbond
Perhaps not coincidentally, almost all of the increased land rent that comes
with increased density is captured by the Singaporean state, since it is the
ultimate landowner ("privately owned" land is actually leased from the state
on a 99 year basis).

This means that as an area becomes more desirable, more people move there,
land rent goes up, and the state earns more and more capital to build/maintain
infrastructure and bureaucracy that is proportional to its population.

Contrast with the Bay Area (only used as an exemplar of basically all of
America/the western world), which is full of extraordinarily wealthy people
paying enormous rents to live under a dysfunctional government with a
budgetary shortfall of $6.3B.

It appears that high Singaporean rents go back into paying for a society worth
living in, while high San Franciscan rents go into the pockets of a handful of
landlords (who of course contributed nothing to San Francisco's explosion of
productivity over the last few decades).

~~~
madengr
It’s a whole different argument as to San Francisco productiveness. Is twitter
productive? I’d call it a waste of time.

~~~
eru
When someone uses a term without qualification, it's a reasonable first
assumption to go with the meaning of the corresponding Wikipedia article, like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity)

Productivity is a technical term in economics. It connects to people's
subjective judgement in the aggregate (ie San Francisco is only considered
productive if people want what they produce) but doesn't care that one person
in particular doesn't like what they do.

For comparison, I don't like 'Light Beer', but a big brewery figuring out how
to make more Light Beer from less malts still counts as a productivity
improvement.

------
joshuaheard
I don't know how it works in Detroit, but in Texas where I am a lawyer, it is
very hard to lose your home to property tax foreclosure. First, the property
taxes are on the web, so the homeowner can go anytime and see how much they
owe, and in some cases can pay online. Then, if you are delinquent, you are
sent many notices that the homeowner must ignore. Then, even after the
property sells at auction, the homeowner can redeem the property for the
unpaid taxes for up to a year, again after receiving many notices.

~~~
tmm84
The business of Detroit gaining ownership of houses due to unpaid taxes is
huge. There are some documentaries on this but the short of it is the main
seller of properties in Detroit is the city itself due to how easily it gains
control over properties through taxation. The same kind of thing has been
happening in Chicago with car impounding that leads to auctioning off cars.

------
5555624
From a month ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21464572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21464572)

~~~
s1artibartfast
Thanks. Its shocking how many posters in that thread thought it was entirely
appropriate for the state to retain the profits.

------
jcims
This is how you get killdozer.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Also mentioned in the original thread!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465657)

------
FpUser
Cases like this make my blood boil. It is really depressing when state can
commit great injustice towards constituents without any redress and there is
no special power that can fix plain and obvious wrongs right in place (well
presidents pardoning their cronys are the exception).

------
msie
I thought there was more to this story. I read about it before. It’s not just
how the guy miscalculated interest?

------
newnewpdro
While this is obviously unjust, I'm baffled by why someone paying an already
delinquent property tax bill with clear risks of foreclosure wouldn't err on
the side of overpaying.

When you overpay your property taxes, they send you a check for the balance. I
accidentally overpaid mine this year by $10, the county mailed back a check in
that amount with no further information or interaction required. I hadn't even
realized the error until receiving it unannounced.

------
jotm
What the f Michigan... I'm assuming it's different in other states?

Usually yeah the government forces you to sell your property and pay the debt,
but any extra from the sale is the property owner's... Which makes way more
sense.

How can you even call this ownership if your house is sold _and you get
nothing_ if you don't pay your property tax...

~~~
monster_group
In US, whether you really own your house is debatable. The appraisal district
(the entity taxing your property), the home owner's association and the
mortgaging bank can legally take possession of your house if you don't pay
your dues.

~~~
UncleEntity
I seriously doubt the HOA can seize your home over $8.41 in back dues and
pocket the difference after they sell it.

The mortgaging bank OTOH is the _actual_ owner of the property up until you
pay the full contractual price and they sign over the deed.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The mortgaging bank OTOH is the actual owner of the property up until you
> pay the full contractual price and they sign over the deed.

No, they are the owner of the mortgage which is recorded on the deed until the
terms of the mortgage are fulfilled. While a mortgage is _a_ real property
interest, it is not ownership of the underlying property.

------
anfilt
If only states gave out allodial titles/deeds.

------
GlTChWhISKY
This is just as bad as police seizures

~~~
duelingjello
Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF) obviously violates the 4th, 6th and 14th
amendments to any reasonable person, but because the police profit from it,
lawyering cognitive dissonance continues to legitimize it as legal. What it
means is that innocent people carrying large sums of cash or having expensive
property will continue to have it taken from them unless they are rich and
have aggressive lawyers. CAF requires proving a negative (an impossibility),
as well as assuming guilt, deprivation of property immediately and proving
innocence later, which seems mutually exclusive with fundamental tenants of
the US justice system: "innocent until proven guilty" and "due-process."

 _It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends on his not understanding it._ \- Upton Sinclair

------
masonic
For those homeowners in SV (at minimum), remember that your first installment
of your 2019-20 is delinquent after Tuesday, so pay (or postmark) by then.

------
duelingjello
Speaking of property taxes:

 _‘Dear God, help us all’: Utah taxpayers stung after home valued at [$987
Megabucks] in ‘horrific’ typo_

[https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-
economy/dear-g...](https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/dear-
god-help-us-all-utah-taxpayers-stung-after-home-valued-at-14-billion-in-
horrific-typo/news-story/61d618ab32e0d24ff537b5649b4d2993)

------
ausjke
It shows me a system that lacks flexibility, it's scary.

------
exabrial
Property taxes are a special form of BS: here's a fine for using the money you
earned and we didn't seize from you in other taxes for merely parsing an
asset.

~~~
chrisseaton
Property taxes aren’t fines or punishment - they’re to pay for the
civilisation around your property which costs money to run.

~~~
exabrial
Does one have an option to consent? If there is no consent, it's one of
punishment, fines, or theft.

~~~
gshdg
You consent by buying / not selling your property. Besides which, where do you
think your “rights” to “own” property come from?

~~~
anon84759392
It's my natural right to own property, with the caveat that such ownership is
defined by my ability to defend it by whatever means necessary: socially,
physically, logically, legally, etc.

Or at least that's what my country's founders might have believed and tried to
establish. We might argue they're still correct in some sense even in spite of
a government or society that insists otherwise.

~~~
perl4ever
"Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but
of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that,
as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master."

~~~
gshdg
To whom is that attributed?

~~~
perl4ever
Adam Smith.

