_http://www.peoplestribune.org/PT.2010.11/PT.2010.11.06.shtml_ (http://www.peoplestribune.org/PT.2010.11/PT.2010.11.06.shtml) Tax Foreclosures Sweep Wayne County, Michigan
Maureen Taylor, State Chair, Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (center). PHOTO /daymonjhartley .com The People’s Tribune interviewed Maureen Taylor, chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. PT: Maureen, tell us about the tax foreclosures sweeping Wayne County, Michigan. Maureen Taylor: In Wayne County, Michigan, 32 cities are woefully behind in people being able to pay their property taxes. Upwards of 70% of the folks that should be paying taxes on property have defaulted. Only about 23% of the folks that have property taxes are current. Things are so bad in terms of unemployment that the county was almost ready to call for a takeover because they couldn’t make the payment on the bills. PT: Are these tax foreclosures also in affluent communities? MT: There are places like Inkster, Romulus, Detroit, and Gross Point Woods, which is one of the highest cities with the default rate. That is where upper middle class persons were living. So many have been laid off, they just walked away from their houses. When you ride through their main streets you can see 5-6–8 bedroom houses boarded up along the river. PT: What are people doing about this? MT: Mostly people pray. People go down to their local city government and city councils to ask and demand help. We are bumping into each other as we try to figure out how to keep body and soul together. We have a mass walk away response. Even members of the Detroit City Council have walked away from their properties because they cannot pay the taxes. Some of these cities have been hardest hit on bank foreclosures -- but we are not talking about bank foreclosures. We are talking about tax foreclosures. Tax foreclosures are tied to the fact that when you first bought the house it was $200,000 but now its worth $50,000 but the bank wants you to pay $200,000 and the taxes are based on $200,000. Its wholesale destruction of neighborhoods all over the county. PT: What is the cause? MT: We continue to allow this entity call capitalism to rape and pillage workers. It is a system that is based on ‘gotcha,’ on ambush, on feeding frenzy. They eat us and we die. Everything about capitalism is destruction. If the $200,000 house is now worth, $50,000, they want you to still pay $200,000. If you walk away and its insured and it gets broken into, the bank still gets $200,000 on a wreck of the house. They keep getting paid over and over. It’s like a brand new car. You pay $40,000 when you buy it and keep it for three years and sell it. The next person pays $25,000 over the next 3 years and now its 6 years old. The next person pays $10,000 over the next three years. And then it shows up at the gas station with a sign in the dashboard. It’s now sold for $5,000. Then it shows up in the almost junk yard and somebody buys it for $800. So we got, $40,000, $25,000, $10,000, $800 and then they sell what’s left for parts. You can’t make this stuff up. So it is this system of capitalism and people’s inability to see that God loves us all and we should do better by each other. PT: What is the next step People are discussing what to do. The conversation can’t be relegated to this one is Democrat and this one is Republican. We have to rise above this petty politics and ask how can we make our community, our society, responsible for ourselves and the children. We can’t do it with the current guidelines because the feeding frenzy is at an all time high. We better think about what kind of new society we can organize where we can live and die of old age in our beds. That’s the direction. _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
