In the next three weeks, as reported by the Detroit News, Deadline Detroit, and others today, 18,000 Detroit families will be offered a one-time opportunity to get square with their property tax burden. But is this really an opportunity for escaping usurious interest and debt load, or just a cosmetic solution that fails to address the systemic problem?

There are three pieces of this schism to investigate:

1.) How many families are actually facing foreclosure this year?

2.) Why is the word “families” being used? Who is excluded from that group?

3.) How is this story presented locally versus nationally?

Let’s take it from the top:

1.) There are not 18,000 occupied homes facing foreclosure this year. There are 28,000.

Few discuss the, as of February this year, 10,000 tax “reverter properties” that are residential and occupied. Reverter properties are those that sold in the last couple years through a tax foreclosure auction, but have failed to pay taxes. Under a provision added to the tax foreclosure protocol, the Wayne County Treasurer may seize properties that sell at auction and fail to keep current with their taxes before the three year deadline for tax foreclosure.

This can be a good provision — it allows the Treasurer to break the cycle of speculators that purchase properties and use the three year foreclosure cycle, and subsequent payment plans, as a tactic to maximize the value of rent extraction from tenants, or to minimize overhead while speculating on property.

However, they’re still occupied properties that are going to go into government hands. While there is a similar opportunity to redeem reverters, their fate may or may not be any different from any other type of occupied property that winds up in government hands.

2.) Why is it always “18,000 families facing foreclosure”? What’s with the “families”?

Certainly the emphasis on retaining families is admirable, but there’s a reason for that word versus any other. As the Detroit News reported recently:

“Of the roughly 35,000 occupied properties facing foreclosure, 18,000 are owned by the individuals or families who live in them.”



“Families,” here, is synonymous with “owner-occupied properties.”

The other 17,000 or so occupied properties are likely, vastly, rentals. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t families living in them. Detroit as a city is more than 50% rental properties. In many cases, the landlord culture in Detroit isn’t great — predatory, inept, incompetent — all of that exists in spades. So it doesn’t make sense to urge “unsavory landlords” to come forward and pay their taxes so they can keep bilking rent from their unsuspecting tenants. Nonetheless, there are families in many of those homes.

Above: An occupied home in December 2013 that is facing foreclosure in 2015.

3.) Why is the local take on foreclosure so different from the more fatalist national perspective?

The local and national media do not agree on whether Detroiters face a golden opportunity, or an unmitigated disaster.

Detroit produced tax foreclosure stories today from the Detroit News and Deadline Detroit. Both recounted talking points from a press conference that highlighted the “once in a lifetime break” represented by a pair of bills passed in the state legislature last year that cap the amount of back taxes owed by property owners. From the News:

“Joan Lee owns two houses on the city’s west side. She had been paying $400 each month for the delinquent taxes between both properties and has since reached an agreement that reduced the amount to $180.”



On the national side, Bloomberg Business and the Los Angeles Times both reported on tax foreclosure with stories titled “Another Blight for Detroit: Property Taxes“ and ”Amid Detroit’s resurgence, foreclosure crisis still threatens homeowners,” respectively. From Bloomberg:



“Cindy Gresham… probably will lose the home, which came with a surprise $8,586 unpaid tax bill that has since tripled. Gresham said she was told by county officials that she could avoid foreclosure if she put down $963 and then agreed to pay $321 a month toward her balance, along with the roughly $200 she owes each month in current taxes. That’s money she doesn’t have.”

It is endlessly striking how blasé local media is to this issue. When outsiders come in to experience this saga, or a Detroit story gets out, the reaction is uniformly one of astonishment. The assumption within Detroit that “everyone knows what happened here” is flatly wrong. This blog, whose virality last year put pictures of destroyed foreclosures in Detroit in front of tens of millions of people, is evidence of the incredulity with which the rest of the globe regards the city’s predicament and the extent to which the story is transmitted to the rest of the country only in fragments.

It is imperative that locals in media, in policy, and anyone invested in remaining in the city long-term acknowledge the severity and scale of what we face, otherwise the destruction will continue apace.

Above: The same house from above as of February 2015. Amongst the city’s fires, occupied foreclosures burn at a significantly higher rate than average.