Scott must put an end to tax sales now | READER COMMENTARY
Each spring in Baltimore, with the beautiful flowers blooming, comes a darker side of the city — the annual tax sale.
This year, over 7,600 Baltimore homeowners received notice that their homes would be going into tax sale. This number is high, but there is a bill (House Bill 243) pending in Annapolis that would put even more tenant-occupied and heirs’ properties into tax sale for unpaid water bills (“General Assembly bill on tax sales would rescind protections for Baltimoreans, advocates say,” March 12).
Despite reports that the Baltimore City Department of Public Works has wrongly billed customers for decades, Mayor Brandon Scott has not publicly come out against HB 243.
Tax sale is a process by which the city collects unpaid property taxes and certain public citations. A homeowner who owes as little as $750 in property taxes can have their property go to tax sale and will often have to pay thousands of dollars in interest, attorneys fees and court costs to keep their home.
According to two legal nonprofits, Pro Bono Resource Center and Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service, over 80% of their tax sale prevention clients are Black, over 33% are disabled and close to 75% are over the age of 60.
The tax sale system is predatory. It benefits a small group of private investors and preys on those who are most vulnerable. As an attorney with MVLS, most of my clients want a way to pay the taxes they owe yet the city will not allow them to enter into payment plans for back taxes.
On February 26, a group of advocates penned a letter to the mayor asking him to remove homeowners from tax sale and fix this broken system. To date, we still have not received a response.
We call upon Mayor Scott to pull homeowners out of tax sale now, publicly oppose House Bill 243 and fix this broken tax sale system. The lives and futures of too many Baltimore residents depend on it.
— Margaret Henn, Baltimore
The writer is deputy director of Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service.
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