The first thing I did after reading about the controversy over Ryan Mendoza’s “The White House” at 20194 Stoepel is the first thing I do with any property in Detroit: Check the property taxes.

LOVELAND records the property as delinquent on its taxes and scheduled for tax foreclosure in 2016. The official tax foreclosure date is March 31st, or, two days from now. The property owes $4,252 in back taxes. In two days, it will be owned by the Wayne County Treasurer, where it will sit around waiting for the fall tax foreclosure auction.

I haven’t seen that reported anywhere in the coverage of Mendoza’s “The White House,” which I thought odd, as it’s a fairly important detail. Information from the Wayne County Treasurer’s website for 20194 Stoepel*, below:

20194 Stoepel’s status on the precipice of tax foreclosure is especially worth considering alongside the accusations of ruin porn and the deteriorated condition the property was left in after the artist’s work on it.

There was a fair amount of outrage after people realized Mendoza stripped the façade and shipped it across an ocean, while the rest of the house was left in tatters:



But there’s another reality here that we should acknowledge: The fact that 20194 Stoepel was days away from foreclosure, already unoccupied, and showing signs of deterioration, suggests that it was likely only a matter of time until that property looked as bad as it did after Mendoza took its façade. That’s been the fate of tens of thousands of tax foreclosed properties in Detroit, as this Tumblr is basically dedicated to demonstrating:

Does that mean someone is justified in leaving a hulking pile of crap in the middle of the neighborhood just because a property is headed to tax foreclosure? Hell no. It’s just as unjustified as it would be if an arsonist burned down a house scheduled for tax foreclosure.

But there was a fair amount of energy focused on one artist’s mess while the engine of tax foreclosure rumbles steadily along in the background – with a track record far more proven than any artist’s at destroying neighborhoods – ready to grind through another 15,000 - 20,000 Detroit properties in 2016 and 2017 and 2018…

In fact, within just two blocks of 20194 Stoepel, as of January 2016, were 13 occupied homes slated for tax foreclosure this year:

The overlap of neighborhood deterioration and tax foreclosure is almost total. LOVELAND has found that of 58,000 properties in Detroit showing signs of blight / deterioration / decay (whatever your preferred term) 50,000 had either been through tax foreclosure, or were delinquent on their taxes.

Today, the Detroit Free Press reports the exposed guts of 20194 Stoepel were finally demolished. Great. I’m happy for the owners of the properties adjacent to 20194 Stoepel that they no longer are at risk because of it. But there is a far larger universe of property in Detroit poised for continued foreclosure, deterioration, increased demolition funding needs, and population exodus.

One artist-generated problem down, one tax foreclosure-policy-generated catastrophe to go.

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*An Extended Footnote: On the Ownership of 20194 Stoepel

But who owns 20194 Stoepel now? Or, for the next 48 hours, at least. Local media coverage says that a local Detroit family, “the Thomas family,” were the previous owners of the home, and they lost the property to tax foreclosure in 2012. The Detroit Free Press reported that “Gregory L. Johnson” now owns 20194 Stoepel Street and gave Mendoza permission to use the property.

Sort of true: The property was foreclosed, though in 2013, not 2012, and sold at tax auction for $500 to Keith Benjamin LLC (a sum low enough to make you wonder if the family realized they could have had their house back for $500).

However, I can’t find any record of Gregory L. Johnson as the owner of the property. The owner is still listed as “Lillian Thomas” presumably of “The Thomas Family.” Even Wayne County’s notice of foreclosure in the Detroit Legal News from December 2015, which obsessively lists everyone the county treasurer thinks might have an interest in the property, does not list Gregory L. Johnson:

The last recorded owner of the property in the Wayne County Register of Deeds is Keith Benjamin LLC, via the $500 purchase of the property at auction in 2013. However the owner name hasn’t changed since then – the notice of foreclosure was issued to Lillian Thomas. I was surprised to dig an inch below the surface and find a picture of ownership and tax delinquency much more complicated than what anyone has reported on.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Gregory L. Johnson isn’t the owner – the world of $500 auction purchases and subsequent property transfers is a murky one in Wayne County. Land contracts, quit claim deeds, property transfers without any record of transaction – all of them are prevalent. It’s just odd, and a fact overlooked at least by the reporting I’ve seen on this story.