Tuesday, October 9, 2018

DeBlasio unfairly seizing properties


From Kings County Politics:

Mayor Bill de Blasio today defended the city’s taking of more than 60 properties in Brooklyn – including those of at least three fully paid off African American owned properties worth millions of dollars – and transferring their ownership for “re-development” to non-profit and for profit companies.

But New York State Attorney General Candidate Keith Wofford took de Blasio and the entire city government to task for incompetence at best, and illegal political corruption at worst, in seizing the properties.

“What’s happening here is disgraceful and likely illegal. Mayor De Blasio lives nearby and sleeps securely at night, while his administration creates anxiety and fear among vulnerable citizens whose largest asset is ripped away without compensation or due process,” said Wofford.

Wofford went so far as to call the foreclosure proceedings “unconstitutional,” and urged the Mayor to act immediately in stopping anymore transfers under the program.

The program that the city’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) utilizes in taking properties is called the Third Party Transfer (TPT) program, which goes back to the 1980s when New York City had many blighted and burned out properties. The program designates qualified sponsors to purchase and rehabilitate distressed vacant and occupied multi-family properties in order to improve and preserve affordable housing for low-to moderate-income households.

Over the years the program has been amended in its definition of distressed properties, most recently in 2016, in which the City Council approved an expansion of the program to include buildings which are subject to Environmental Control Board (ECB) judgments as a result of building code violations in the amount of a lien to value ratio equal to or greater than 25%.

In order for HPD to obtain the foreclosure judgments, the agency sought, needed and received city council approval – an approval that some city council members now say they approved because HPD misled them.

The story came to light, when KCP learned the city foreclosed on Marlene Saunders, 74, a retired nurse, who nearly lost her paid-off and in pristine condition brownstone at 1217 Dean Street on a rapidly gentrifying block in Crown Heights.

The three-story brownstone had been in the Saunders family for 30 years and has been appraised at over $2.2 million. Saunders son showed KCP copies of checks paid and cashed by the city for property and water taxes, but were never applied to the property. He also stated the family knew nothing about the court proceeding, in which a foreclosure judgement was issued and only learned the family no longer owned the property through a flyer delivered to the brownstone months after they lost the deed.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Reverse Robin Hood here

faster340 said...

You would have to try and take my deed while looking down the barrels of my shotgun!

Anonymous said...

Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the 2015 legislation, said the measure was never intended to put longtime property owners with smaller properties in foreclosure

You sniveling little twit. This is exactly why this blog exists: to call out the unintended consequences of your smarmy hubris. You, yes YOU, are partially responsible for people being stripped of their property.

Anonymous said...

WE ARE ON OUR WAY TO BECOMING THE SAN FRANCISCO OF THE EAST. JUST WAIT AND SEE...

Anonymous said...

Not a very good article and maybe I don't understand it. So shit properties (that can fuck up neighbor's property values) can be bought out by the city, and rehabbed.
I kind of agree with that.

Anonymous said...

Was this property taken because of back taxes? That story is not really clear about that little detail. If taxes were all paid and up to date then it doesn't qualify.. Give it back. Why is this so difficult in New York?

Anonymous said...

Wofford makes alot of good points, sadly it looks like Tish James will be Attorney General...

Also, we have pretty much become the San Francisco of the East...

User1 said...

Here is a good article of what's happened.
https://www.kingscountypolitics.com/1217-dean-street/

Regardless my question is - if the property is worth 2.2 million and she didn't pay 5k of taxes, what gives the city the right to hand over her property without paying her anything...

I was under the impression that back taxes or bills would put a lien on your property and without repayment the creditor would request to auction the property and they'd take their share and give you the rest after the sale.

This "law" is a modern day swindle for those who get caught up in it. Thankfully this woman was not alone and had an involved son to keep her from taken. This should be taken off the book.

Seniors fall on financial hardships due to health and the income coming in and the increases in cost of living where they don't have the income to maintain their properties after a time and they don't have the funds to move or buy something else. To buy something else or rent something else you need the deposits or down payments. While it is not ideal to have a house in bad condition, it's their property and you should have no right to tell anyone how to maintain it. Yes this would suck for the neighbors but how about instead of the city making a grab for it they help them before they become homeless and we're spending 30K plus to house them...

Greed Greed Greed

Anonymous said...

Not a very good article and maybe I don't understand it. So shit properties (that can fuck up neighbor's property values) can be bought out by the city, and rehabbed.
I kind of agree with that.


Yeah, if they were actually bought for assessed or fair market value. Even eminent domain seizure allows that much. They were FORECLOSED AND TAKEN. Instead the city could have simply padlocked them, and fined them the bill for doing rehabilitation after failing at a good faith attempt to reach the owner.

Anonymous said...

That is such crap. You shouldnt be allowed to throw someone out of their FULLY PAID OFF PROPERTY. That is such crap. I would fight tooth and nail. That is SO NOT RIGHT. Mayor dumbdumb strikes again. Hes going to drive everyone that actually pays taxes out of NYC. I hope all the taxpayers leave and all that's left is homeless people and rich people because most of them dont pay their taxes. The rich always have a way to get tax write offs and the homeless (for the most part) dont have jobs.

JQ LLC said...

The gentrification industrial complex of government and real estate. Ben Kallos shows he can be as cunningly obtuse as Mayor de Faustio.

There was a story not long ago about how the dope from park slope pays less taxes on his house than people to in poorer neighborhoods. And this is good example, because there are still poor people in Bed-Stuy, and in these cases middle class people becoming poor because of costs of higher property taxes stemming from specualtion/fabrication of bloated real estate market rates.

de Faustio promised to end the Tale of two cities and has broken that promise, almost gleefully. This article shows that yet another scandal has emerged in this fauxgressive administration.

Anonymous said...

Every municipality has the right to foreclose on property when taxes are in arrears, but that's usually after three consecutive years and if you have an attorney, you can pay a minimum to stave off the foreclosure. This, however, sounds like theft.

JQ LLC said...

There are a bunch of other stories in KCP about the city's and these organizations plundering (and one of them is supposed to be a charity too). In all of them these buildings do not look dilapidated at all, they are well maintained. The "mistakes" made by the city not documenting these people's payments reeks of the same shenanigans that Jared Kushner and countless other scumlords pull when they "mistakenly" not check that the buildings they own or buy have rent-stabilized units.

What a lot of people don't know is that de Faustio considers Jared a friend.

The gentrification industrial complex plan is devour the entire borough of Brooklyn. After all, it's a worldwide brand now. Funny, I used to think it was a place to live in.

TommyR said...

that is some grade a bullshit if true. I hope the saunders are able to successfully contest this.

Anonymous said...

>You would have to try and take my deed while looking down the barrels of my shotgun!

And now you know why the city and state government don't want you to have guns.

Anonymous said...

Mao siezed property by charging thousand years back tax

minababe said...

Wow, Queens Crap! Thanks for linking to this story and spreading the word! I've been warning my elderly mother for years (who owns a househ) that developers are getting more aggressive in Brooklyn. She keeps thinking that she doesn't have to worry because she has "receipts" and "copies." Now we know differently.

Oh, BTW, I always knew that DeBlasio was a neoliberal scumbag cut from the same cloth as Bloomberg. He's even worse than Giuliani because at least Giuliani didn't pretend to be a friend of the working class and minorities; he made everyone know he wanted them out of NYC.