Monday, January 23, 2012

Government Prevents 101-Year-Old Evictee From Moving Back Home - The Consumerist

Government Prevents 101-Year-Old Evictee From Moving Back Home - The Consumerist
Four months ago, a 101-year-old Detroit woman was evicted from her home because her son could no longer afford payments. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development stepped in and said she go back home, but has now reversed course, deeming the residence unfit to live in.

She tells The Detroit News "Here I am, 100 years old (rounding her age), and don't have a home. Oh Lord, help me."

Now that the HUD controls the property, officials say the house is beyond repair and the department won't pay the cost to get it up to code. The department is looking for alternatives, but for now the woman has no permanent home as she crashes with a friend.

She lived in the house for nearly 60 years, but lost control when she entered into a reverse mortgage. Her sad plight serves as a warning sign for retirees who think a reverse mortgage may be an easy fix to their financial problems.

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Here's the original article from the Detroit News.

2 comments:

Beth said...

These stories are so sad. It would be nice if everyone "knew better" but some of these people were simply preyed upon, yet there seem to be no consequences for the predators.

Anonymous said...

According to the Detroit News story at www.detroitnews.com/article/20120122/METRO01/201220308/Evicted-Detroiter-100-years-old-don-t-home- , she was evicted for failure to pay $7,000 in property taxes, about 22% of the home's value:

She was forced to leave in September after her son, Warren Hollis, 65, failed to pay $7,000 in property taxes to keep a reverse mortgage taken out in 2002, despite months of warnings.
...
HUD had warned of foreclosure in June 2010.
Warren Hollis had taken out a reverse mortgage for the assessed property value of $32,000, an option HUD offers senior citizens. By 2006, the amount paid to the family exceeded the value of the house, and HUD took control of the mortgage.

$7,000 is 7 times greater than the $1,000 threshold that you believe it is acceptable to foreclose upon homeowners for failure to pay privatized property taxes. Additionally, it sounds like HUD was the mortgage holder, unlike a community association, and was actually providing a value to the homeowner at the time. HUD's stake in the home was real, not a legal fiction.

So I'm not sure what the problem is here.