“A few years back, the organization accrued a $2,543 property tax debt on its community center. So in 2018, the city sold that lien for $5,115 to a California-based investor, who then foreclosed on and sold the ECO’s building for $139,500. In return, the ECO got a check for the difference between its debt and the lien purchase price: $2,572.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words, all told, the organization paid six figures to compensate for the $2,543 it owed the government, in what a new federal lawsuit<\/a> alleges is a pervasive practice in Baltimore that illegally deprives people of their equity in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Taking Clause as the city attempts to satisfy modest tax debts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every spring, Baltimore bureaucrats conduct a mass auction online to sell off liens like the ECO’s. Sometimes the unlucky debtors have fallen just hundreds of dollars behind on their taxes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n