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| Economy |
| Motor City: A Home Foreclosure Conveyor Belt |
| 2015-04-21 |
| 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. Little wonder that it seemed as if everyone was getting stuck in the rotating doors of that Wayne County office building on the last day residents could pay their past-due property taxes or enter a payment plan to do so. Those who didn't, the city warned, would lose their homes to tax foreclosure, the process by which a local government repossesses a house because of unpaid property taxes. |
| Posted by:Glereting Sloting2722 |
| #4 I'm waiting for the UN to speak up, like they did when the water department threatened to shut off the water for people who hadn't paid their water bills. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2015-04-21 15:24 |
| #3 Mike, you also might add a question concerning ethnicity of the foreclosed individuals, and I will bet that you can make a case that foreclosure is racist..... |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2015-04-21 14:51 |
| #2 Property taxes are little more than rent paid to the gov't. They are an evil mechanism of servitude in Detroit and elsewhere. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-04-21 09:52 |
| #1 ...I'd be interested in several bits of info the article doesn't mention: *What's the average amount of property tax owed? *Are these houses clustered in a particular area? *Has there been interest by investors in those areas? I suspect that the good people who run Detroit know something they ain't telling. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2015-04-21 08:48 |