Wayne County’s tax foreclosures continue to disproportionately impact African-American homeowners
By Guest Blogger, Professor Bernadette Atuahene
This week the Coalition to End Unconstitutional Tax Foreclosures released a short animated video explaining the basis of the heart-breaking, government-created crisis that is causing tens of thousands of Detroiters to lose their homes.
By Kimberly Buddin-Crawford
Hundreds of African-American homeowners in Detroit will lose their properties this fall, joining the thousands before them who are part of one of the largest tax foreclosure crises since the Great Depression. For many, the narrative is similar: residents are given tax bills that do not reflect the value of their homes and which they are unable to pay. Left with few options, the residents often wind up having their homes taken in foreclosure.
ACLU of Michigan legal director Michael J. Steinberg explains Wayne County's tax foreclosure crisis.
DETROIT—The ACLU of Michigan, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and lawyers from Covington & Burling LLP today filed a class-action lawsuit against the Wayne County Treasurer, Wayne County and the City of Detroit to challenge illegal, racially discriminatory tax foreclosures that have pummeled African-American homeowners in recent years.
African Americans in Wayne County are suffering from a tax foreclosure crisis more severe than any this region has seen since the Great Depression. But unlike the Great Depression, the homeowners today are at risk of losing their homes for taxes they never should have been required to pay in the first place.
The ACLU of Michigan, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and lawyers from Covington & Burling LLP filed a class-action lawsuit against the Wayne County Treasurer, Wayne County and the City of Detroit on July 13, 2016 to challenge illegal, racially discriminatory tax foreclosures that have pummeled African-American homeowners in recent years.
Named plaintiffs in the suit are homeowners Walter Hicks, Julia Aikens, Dewhannea Fox, Edward Knapp, Robert Lewis, DeAunna Black and Spirlin Moore. The Historic Russell Woods-Sullivan Area Association, the MorningSide Community Organization, the Oakman Boulevard Community Association and Neighbors Building Brightmoor are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which was filed in Third Circuit Court in Wayne County.
Walter HicksThe City of Detroit had the wrong man, and Walter Hicks knew it.
In 2014, the 57-year-old Hicks, a disabled Detroit homeowner who lives off of barely more than $15,000 a year in social-services benefits, went to the city municipal building to apply for a poverty exemption from his property tax bill. Although an appraisal of the fair-market value of the home estimated it to be worth about $9,000, an overinflated assessment by the City of Detroit in 2013 had bloated the supposed cash value of Hicks' home—to more than $40,000.
As a result of the $31,000 over-assessment, Hicks' tax bill stood at more than $1,600.
"I just want to be treated fairly," says Hicks.
