Arlington, Texas

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Imagine for a moment you have been foreclosed on and evicted from your home. Unfortunately this isn’t a leap for far too many Americans who have experienced just that.

Now imagine that on top of getting kicked out of your house due to predatory lending practices and an economic downturn thanks mostly to the same predators in the financial industry, you get fined for not keeping up the house they took from you.

It is quite unfortunate to say that this isn’t an absurd hypothetical situation, but in fact the reality of David Englett of Crowley, Texas. Englett is now being charged for not paying a series of fines from the city of Arlington for such infractions as not mowing the lawn, owning an alarm without the proper permit, and for having a fence that is in bad shape, according to the Dallas-Fort Worth local CBS affiliate.

Englett’s story is nothing short of insane, given that he was foreclosed on some two years ago and hasn’t lived in the house since.

“I feel like I’m being punished for something I didn’t do.” Englett said. “It’s really frustrating and costing me a lot of time.”

Englett discovered that he had outstanding warrants when he attempted to renew his truck driver’s license last july.

“I don’t want to go to jail over nothing – never been to jail – don’t want to go to jail,” he lamented.

“I didn’t live there, so why would I worry about it the bank foreclosed on it,” Englett said. In response to the warrant for operating an alarm without a permit he said,” Even when I lived there we never activated the alarm.”

The City of Arlington has responded to Englett’s plight by claiming that if the title hasn’t officially changed, then you’re still the owner of the home and thus responsible for everything on said property.

Englett is having to pay a significant amount of money to the city, even though he is likely having financial woes given his home was foreclosed on.

He has already forked over $150 to remove a hold on his license and he says that he still owes the City of Arlington hundreds more.

The local CBS station’s legal expert Jerry Loftin explained it by saying, “You have to remember cities are all about grabbing money from you[.] I mean they try anyway they can.”

Although Loftin also stated, “If it’s foreclosed, it’s not his,” which is a phenomenal point. If he’s not allowed to live there since he was evicted, how can he possibly be expected to keep up the state of the house?

Englett had a hearing on the matter earlier this week and he is hoping that he can get the matter cleared up.

The City of Arlington simply said that they are looking into his case, without providing any details about what they have found or if they think it is remotely reasonable to engage in such activities.

“I don’t understand why the City of Arlington wants to keep on with something when I showed proof and the bank owned it and not me,” Englett stated.

As far as I’ve been able to find, it has not been reported how the hearing went or if the ridiculous fines were lifted.

Unfortunately, Englett’s situation is not a wholly unique one, as cities across the nation try to deal with their budget shortfalls by collecting more money in fines and fees.

According to a study by New York State Senator Jeff Klein, a Bronx Democrat, New York City has a large problem with reclaimed homes with property violations.

His survey, cited by the New York Daily News found that banks have reclaimed around 2,000 homes which amounted to some 3,700 fines.

Banks have been guilty of refusing to pay the fines in many cases, indeed hundreds. This is likely why the City of Arlington chose to go after Englett and not the bank that actually foreclosed on his home.

Deutsche Bank has been one of the worst offenders in New York City, according to Klein’s findings, with 211 of their properties carrying outstanding fines.

U.S. Bank also has around $40,000 in unpaid city fines, a sum which would likely get Englett or any other individual thrown into jail immediately.

Yet for some reason corporate personhood seems to be a one way street since no one is rushing to prosecute U.S. Bank and throw the imaginary corporate person in prison like a real human being would be treated.

The Huffington Post points to several other examples of town around the United States taking a more aggressive approach to property maintenance violations.

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In just the past two weeks, both Stonington and Woodbury, Connecticut have proposed blight ordinances along with Bellows Falls, Vermont while Rocky Hill, Rhode Island is currently considering increasing the severity of the punishments for violations of their blight ordinance.

Instead of highlighting the rising costs associated with keeping up properties like the Huffington Post, I think this story is a great example of how banks are treated as some kind of super-citizen which is immune from being held responsible for their criminal activity.

We have seen it in the cases of money laundering, the collusion between Goldman Sachs and individuals in government, the so-called “robo-signing” scandal (which has resulted in at least one mysterious death) and so much more.

In an age when average Americans are being subjected to increasingly draconian laws and the so-called justice system is clearly flawed given that it prosecutes even the most shoddy cases while failing to charge people for crimes for which there is ample evidence, so long as they have a badge, one would think that corporations would be held to a similar standard.

Of course this is far from the case because just like police are held to a different, imaginary set of laws, big banks are given immunity from just about everything.

Keep in mind, I’m not talking about local credit unions here, but the “too big to fail” banks, better characterized as “zombie banks” which have robbed the American people blind and are currently in the process of destroying the entire global financial system, with the help of the private Federal Reserve, of course.

Hopefully stories like this one can help raise awareness of this nonsensical practice and the injustice that has become far too rampant in the United States.

Do your part and share this information with as many people as you can as only through making the majority of Americans cognizant and concerned about this trend can we begin to reverse it.

Did I miss something? Want to share your insights, comments, story ideas or writing? Email me at Admin@EndtheLie.com 

This article first appeared at EndtheLie.com. Read other contributed articles by Madison Ruppert here.

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on Orion Talk Radio from 8 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE.  If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com

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Michael Snyder
Activist Post

Did you know that the big banks have a way to legally steal your house from you even if you don’t owe a single penny on your mortgage?  Big banks and hedge funds are buying billions of dollars worth of tax liens from local governments all over the nation, and they are ruthlessly foreclosing on homeowners when they can’t pay the absolutely ridiculous penalties and legal fees that are tacked on to the original tax bill.

As you will see below, one 76-year-old man lost his $197,000 home that he fully owned over a $134 tax bill.  A 95-year-old woman lost her $300,000 home over a $44.79 tax bill.  This is a very, very dirty way to make money, and the predatory financial institutions that are involved in this business definitely do not want to talk about it.

Of course much of the blame should also be shouldered by the local governments that are coldly selling these tax liens to these ruthless predators.  If local governments want to collect their tax bills, they should do it themselves.  They should not be auctioning off their tax liens to cold-hearted financial institutions that are very eager to commit a legal version of highway robbery.

A few days ago, the Washington Post reported on the tragic story of a 76-year-old former Marine named Bennie Coleman.  Coleman had originally purchased his home with cash, but that didn’t stop tax lien predators from stealing his home over an unpaid $134 property tax bill…

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.

So why couldn’t he pay such a small bill?

Well, as the Post explained, these big banks and hedge funds keep tacking on interest, penalties and legal fees until the tax bills are many times the size that they originally were.  When the distressed homeowners can’t come up with thousands of dollars to pay off the debts, the big banks and the hedge funds move in for the kill…

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.

In particular, hedge funds have discovered that this is a great way to make huge piles of money.  The following is a short excerpt from a CNN article that was published back in May…

With buyers identified only by numbers or unrelated names, the fragmented, unregulated industry is opaque. Even the market’s size is debated — $15 billion a year, according to Howard Liggett, the chief executive of Distressed Real Estate Consulting Services, or $5 billion a year, according to the National Tax Lien Association, a trade group. While returns are a closely kept secret, investors typically make between 2.5% and 10% a year, or in the low teens for larger buys.

“The hedge funds are chasing yield in this business” says Albert Friedman, a principal at Alterna Capital, an alternative investment firm in Boca Raton that buys tax liens.

Insiders estimate hedge funds now control 40% of the tax-lien market, from under 5% five years ago, with regional banks, obscure partnerships sporting names like God’s ATM LLC, and mom-and-pop investors making up the rest.

And a number of “too big to fail” banks are involved in this business as well.

In a previous article, I described exactly how this works…

1) The big Wall Street banks set up or invest in shell companies that will disguise who they really are.

2) These shell companies run around and buy up all of the tax liens that they can get their hands on.

3) Predatory levels of interest (in some states as high as 18 percent), fees and penalties rapidly pile up on these unpaid tax liens.  The affected homeowners quickly end up owing much, much more than what the original tax bills were for.

4) If the collecting firm has to hire a lawyer, then that gets charged to the homeowner as well.  The bloated legal fees for some of these lawyers can end up being the biggest expense of all.

5) If the tax liens do not get paid, the collecting firms move in to foreclose as quickly as legally possible.

According to the Huffington Post, Wall Street banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have been gobbling up several hundred thousand tax liens from local governments.  It appears that “distressed housing markets” are being particularly targeted.

Many of these tax liens are sold in online auctions, so it is unclear if many local government officials even realize who the big money behind many of these shell companies is.

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These big financial institutions may consider this to be “good business”, but the truth is that they are absolutely shattering lives in the process.  This is particularly true when it comes to older people that do not fully understand what is happening to them.  Just consider the following examples from a recent Washington Post article…

A 48-year-old math teacher paid his taxes in 2007, but the tax office took his $1,400 payment and applied it to the wrong house, crediting an entirely different taxpayer. 

A 58-year-old bank employee almost lost her house in 2010 because the tax office mistakenly sent bills and notices to a wooded lot across from a strip shopping center in Virginia — 12 times.

A 69-year-old hat designer was given the wrong payoff amount and ended up in court to save her property, owned by her family since 1943.

Those homeowners found out about the mistakes in time to fight. Ninety-five-year-old Daisy Dolsey, living in a nursing home and struggling with Alzheimer’s, wasn’t so lucky: She lost her $300,000 house over a $44.79 tax debt even after she paid her taxes.

Doesn’t that just sicken you?

And then the big banks and the hedge funds have the gall to wonder why people dislike them so much.

In this day and age, large financial institutions have become more cold-hearted than ever before.

Always make sure that your property taxes are fully paid, and always keep a paper record of all financial transactions involving your home.

If you do slip up and make a mistake at some point, there is a very good chance that a ruthless financial institution will try to swoop in and steal your home right out from under your nose.

RELATED ACTIVIST POST ARTICLE:
Bank Forecloses On Elderly Woman Over $49 in Unpaid Taxes

This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog.  Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.

By Mac Slavo

By Jeff Paul

The US government likes to pretend that the rising cost of living is under control. People in Southern California know better. According to a new report in the Los Angeles Times, median house prices in Southern California have nearly doubled in the last five years.

LA Times reports:

In many corners of Southern California, home prices have hit record highs. And they keep going up.

In Los Angeles County, the median price in June jumped 7.4% from a year earlier to $569,000, surpassing the previous record set in May. In Orange County, the median was up 6.1% from 2016 and tied a record reached the previous month at $695,000.

Across the six-county region, the median price — the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less — rose 7.5% from a year earlier and is now just 1% off of its all-time high of $505,000 reached in 2007, according to a report out Tuesday from CoreLogic.

The price increase was even greater than the 7.1% rise recorded in May, and some agents say there are no signs of a slowdown in the Southern California market.

One of Twitter’s funniest economic sleuths, Rudy Havenstein, points out the obvious problem:

In case you’re confused, Rudy is referencing that the US government and its central banking partners desire a 2% inflation rate. Government measures the prices consumers pay for a basket of goods and services to determine the official inflation rate called the Consumer Price Index (CPI). However, the “core” CPI doesn’t include vital things like food and energy.

The chart below from the Bureau of Labor Statistics illustrates how much more dramatic the cost of living rate moves when food and energy are added:

Market optimists tend to quote the core CPI number because it’s less dramatic, but it’s not as accurate as the “headline” CPI with food and energy included. But the core CPI claims to be a good measure of housing costs. Until 1983, the measure of homeowner cost was based largely on house prices. Today, they use some voodoo math since a home is considered an investment and a living expense. Simply put, it attempts to account for owner-occupied homes which may be going up in value, but the monthly cost remains stable. Whereas rents in the same market will rise due to the increased value of homes.

A more reliable measure of home prices, the Case-Shiller Composite Home Price Index, was also released this week. It showed a nationwide increase of 5.6%, closer to Southern California’s rate than the CPI.

The Case-Shiller Index chart below looks very similar to the LA Times chart showing the boom in home prices beginning in 2012.

Home prices alone don’t tell the whole story. Renters are struggling the most. According to a recent report in the Orange County Register, the average rent for a house in Orange County is $3,114 per month and $2,548 for a home in Los Angeles County. The median household income in LA County is around $56,000, before taxes. So rent eats about 50-60% of wages. And Southern California is a microcosm of what is happening in many other cities in America.

The LA Times correctly identifies the market forces causing the price increases: “growing economy, rock-bottom mortgage rates and a shortage of homes on the market.”  And, of course, the LA Times shepherds government action to stop the surge in home values.

Government officials say they are trying to take steps to address the problem of affordability.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti is advocating for a fee on new development to raise money for below-market housing — a policy known as a “linkage fee” and used in cities such as San Francisco, San Diego and Oakland.

And in Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders have said they will put housing at the top of their agenda when they return in August from a monthlong break.

Legislators have proposed a package of bills aimed at raising money for subsidized housing and making it easier for developers to build all kinds of housing, which often faces pushback from residents concerned over traffic and neighborhood character.

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Some cities in Southern California have already made some absurd laws trying to reduce cost of homes like banning Airbnb-type short-term rentals. Watch the video below where Activist Post’s Vin Armani explains this wrongheaded approach:

Markets tend to correct themselves without government interference. People also adapt. It’s one reason the co-living trend is exploding. However, sooner or later not enough people can afford house prices and a correction will begin. For instance, some people will move away and new housing units will be built to accommodate supply and demand.

Take a look as Case-Shiller’s HPI chart below from the boom-bust period of 2002 through 2008. You can clearly see the 2007 correction begin to have its effect.

After loose lending practices, low mortgage rates, and shady Wall Street re-packaging of housing debt enabled the boom period and inevitable bust, the downward trend continued until about 2012 as previously indicated.

Today rates are even lower. Lenders are getting creative again because Millennials don’t qualify due to high student debt and low wages. And Wall Street is as corrupt and greedy as ever. Combine that with the bloated municipalities in desirable areas making it expensive or impossible to get new building permits, and home prices may continue rising at this rate for a couple more years.

Jeff Paul writes for Activist Post and Counter Markets newsletter. Like us on Facebook, subscribe on YouTube, follow on Twitter and at Steemit.

This article is Creative Commons. You may republish in full with attribution and link to this post.