47 Percent of Detroit Homeowners Have Quit Paying Property Taxes

69360 said:
$30k is about right for a house assessed at $500k in Detroit.
Click to expand...

There are homes worth 500k in Detroit?

Yeah, yeah--I know "assessed" value. If Angie's post isn't a typo, there is no way that this city is going to dig itself out.
 
amy31416 said:
There are homes worth 500k in Detroit?

Yeah, yeah--I know "assessed" value. If Angie's post isn't a typo, there is no way that this city is going to dig itself out.
Click to expand...

Yeah there are. I've only been to Detroit a few times, but there are better areas way out close to 8 mile but still in the city
 
phill4paul said:
Winning.
Click to expand...

You call Detroit an example of winning? I would call it a grand example of people dooming themselves. Consider what "winning" has cost them. Many of those "winners" probably worked a good chunk of lifetime to pay for those homes. Those homes once held some reasonable market value. Today, they are essentially worthless and I would bet money that many of those same people remain because they cannot afford to go anywhere else. No job. Perhaps no savings, and definitely no value in their real estate such that they could sell and go elsewhere. Mr. Rock, may I introduce Mr. Hardplace?

That to which you refer as "winning" is in my eyes nothing more than inevitability come home to roost. It is the result of decades of complacency; of having FAILED to do that which you call "winning" when the actions would have held proper meaning - when the place was still a living city. THAT is when people should stand tall before the tyrant and smite him to the ground and leave his body for the coyotes and buzzards.

I suspect that what you witness and assess as "winning" in much of that 47 percent are people who can no longer afford to pay those taxes. Unless you can point me to an explicit tax revolt movement in Detroit, I can only speculate that a large proportion of that dead city's population, having not the means to escape the maw of hell, do what they can to get from one day to the next. Eating >> paying property taxes. If you can demonstrate otherwise, I will happily concede the point, but I will maintain in any event my position that this is not a case of WIN, but of profound FAIL. It is a textbook example of what awaits vast swaths of the population of this nation; the result of the rot of complacency that took root in this nation long, long ago where people decided it was OK to ignore the tyrants and their agents who at first took only nibble from their hides.

Every tyrant, regardless of how petty should be caged or killed outright, quickly, publicly, without mercy, without compunction, without regret, and indeed with a measure of satisfaction knowing that what is right has been done. I assert this without equivocation and do so because we are all of us here first hand witnesses to the results of tolerating that which must never be tolerated in the least measure. Such tolerance not only destroys oneself, but those around him as well. Has one no duty to protect his children from harm?

The sad part in all of this is that most of the nation sees Detroit and will do NOTHING about the similar conditions in their own cities and suburbs. "Can't happen here", is the boilerplate assessment. And so we will see the next city fall and the next, and in each case the rest will say it can't happen in their places because they are somehow different. They will REFUSE (vis-a-vis not be able to) to connect the dots in any appreciable numbers on average between despotic spending and the ultimately disastrous result it yields and before you know it the nation will really be in ruins. That is where I say we are heading and likely to be our fate. Thousands of years of the history of Empire supports this opinion with much steel. Why should it be different now? Why, all of a sudden, should people have become smarter and less compliant to the master's hand? Show me a reason. Please.
 
osan said:
You call Detroit an example of winning? I would call it a grand example of people dooming themselves. Consider what "winning" has cost them. Many of those "winners" probably worked a good chunk of lifetime to pay for those homes. Those homes once held some reasonable market value. Today, they are essentially worthless and I would bet money that many of those same people remain because they cannot afford to go anywhere else. No job. Perhaps no savings, and definitely no value in their real estate such that they could sell and go elsewhere. Mr. Rock, may I introduce Mr. Hardplace?

That to which you refer as "winning" is in my eyes nothing more than inevitability come home to roost. It is the result of decades of complacency; of having FAILED to do that which you call "winning" when the actions would have held proper meaning - when the place was still a living city. THAT is when people should stand tall before the tyrant and smite him to the ground and leave his body for the coyotes and buzzards.

I suspect that what you witness and assess as "winning" in much of that 47 percent are people who can no longer afford to pay those taxes. Unless you can point me to an explicit tax revolt movement in Detroit, I can only speculate that a large proportion of that dead city's population, having not the means to escape the maw of hell, do what they can to get from one day to the next. Eating >> paying property taxes. If you can demonstrate otherwise, I will happily concede the point, but I will maintain in any event my position that this is not a case of WIN, but of profound FAIL. It is a textbook example of what awaits vast swaths of the population of this nation; the result of the rot of complacency that took root in this nation long, long ago where people decided it was OK to ignore the tyrants and their agents who at first took only nibble from their hides.

Every tyrant, regardless of how petty should be caged or killed outright, quickly, publicly, without mercy, without compunction, without regret, and indeed with a measure of satisfaction knowing that what is right has been done. I assert this without equivocation and do so because we are all of us here first hand witnesses to the results of tolerating that which must never be tolerated in the least measure. Such tolerance not only destroys oneself, but those around him as well. Has one no duty to protect his children from harm?

The sad part in all of this is that most of the nation sees Detroit and will do NOTHING about the similar conditions in their own cities and suburbs. "Can't happen here", is the boilerplate assessment. And so we will see the next city fall and the next, and in each case the rest will say it can't happen in their places because they are somehow different. They will REFUSE (vis-a-vis not be able to) to connect the dots in any appreciable numbers on average between despotic spending and the ultimately disastrous result it yields and before you know it the nation will really be in ruins. That is where I say we are heading and likely to be our fate. Thousands of years of the history of Empire supports this opinion with much steel. Why should it be different now? Why, all of a sudden, should people have become smarter and less compliant to the master's hand? Show me a reason. Please.
Click to expand...

Anytime an individual chooses "Eating >> paying property taxes" I consider that a winning proposition. The fact that this same fate "awaits vast swaths of the population", to me, is a bonus. It is time for a wake up. The strong will survive. The strong will learn to replace the government services with mutual co-operation. There are many stories of the strong doing exactly that in their neighborhoods. Search and ye shall find.
 
amy31416 said:
There are homes worth 500k in Detroit?

Yeah, yeah--I know "assessed" value. If Angie's post isn't a typo, there is no way that this city is going to dig itself out.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna agree with 69360 here, I'll wager that she typed that correct, an "upper middle class" home with $30,000 a year in property taxes sounds about right for Detroit.

I know somebody in NJ paying $15,000 a year in property taxes for a 1500 square foot ranch built in the 1970s on a postage stamp lot.
 
The Onion should run a story on a wealthy investor from Hong Kong acquiring Detroit at Tax Auction.
 
Last edited:
phill4paul said:
Anytime an individual chooses "Eating >> paying property taxes" I consider that a winning proposition. The fact that this same fate "awaits vast swaths of the population", to me, is a bonus. It is time for a wake up. The strong will survive. The strong will learn to replace the government services with mutual co-operation. There are many stories of the strong doing exactly that in their neighborhoods. Search and ye shall find.
Click to expand...

That is what is so infuriating to me.

I "pay" for "services" I do not use, need or want.

The vast bulk of my local taxation pays for schools (hah hah) and cops (HAHA HAHA HAHA).

I have none of the following: trash pickup, waste pickup, city water, city sewer or full time paid fire and EMT service (mostly volunteer, they keep a couple paid guys on duty just so somebody is always around).
 
Schifference said:
I recently read that the mill rate in Detroit was very high. That would be insignificant because from what I see property values are in the toilet. Can buy a property in Detroit for chump change so the mill rate is irrelevant.
Click to expand...

It isn't irrelevant, because the way Detroit calculates the value of your home is completely insane.

Here is a link to a presentation explaining it: http://mediasite.mihealth.org/Mediasite/Play/61ddea17-2294-45e7-8bf5-d341f0b48db8

Basically, when a house is first bought they calculate a 'taxable value' based on 'state equalized value' (SEV). SEV is 50% of the real home assessement. Taxable value is then equal to whatever the SEV value is. Taxable value doesn't go down unless you request a re-assessment on the home, but increases by the smaller of CPI (federal calculated CPI btw, so it is averaged across the country - not Detroit CPI as far as I can tell) or 5%/year.

So basically, even though most homes in Detroit are worthless and selling for $1, those homes haven't been re-assessed so the state still considers those homes for tax purposes as owing tax on say $200k (an averaged taxable value that ignores true market prices), instead of $1 which is the real assessment of value. At least that is how I understood it after watching the video and reading a little bit about it. It is absolutely no wonder why people have told the Detroit govt to get bent and just stopped paying their bills.
 
Last edited:
Detroit residents in a mortgaged home could stop paying for a year or two, let it get foreclosed and buy it back in somebody else's name or as a llc at the sheriff's sale for pennies on the dollar using what they saved in payments. Same goes for people who own outright, you could stop paying taxes, let it go to tax auction and buy it back for less than what you would have paid in taxes. You wouldn't even have to leave your home.

There is absolutely no hope at all for that city.
 
Kwame was giving houses away for a $1 but nobody wanted them because of the assessed taxable value was so high that as soon as you take possession of the house you owed $100,000 in taxes.
 
amy31416 said:
I'll have to parrot others here--30k? Did you mean 3k?

Even at 3k, there's no value, but 30k--that's higher than most residents annual salary I'd think.
Click to expand...

No, 30k. It was a foreclosure in an upscale neighborhood. Think - auto executives with kids in private schools. It was eventually torn down. It needed a lot of work.

Cookies for everybody who said it was not a typo. But that's what I mean when I say that moving to Detroit to make it some Libertarian hub doesn't make sense. The taxes are too damned high! (ht Jimmy MacMillan)

There really sould be an upper limit on property taxes. The people living in million dollar mansions don't use 20x's the city resources that people living in smaller homes do.
 
Last edited:
Anti Federalist said:
That is what is so infuriating to me.

I "pay" for "services" I do not use, need or want.

The vast bulk of my local taxation pays for schools (hah hah) and cops (HAHA HAHA HAHA).

I have none of the following: trash pickup, waste pickup, city water, city sewer or full time paid fire and EMT service (mostly volunteer, they keep a couple paid guys on duty just so somebody is always around).
Click to expand...

That's a suckers deal for being forced into a "social" contract.
 
phill4paul said:
Anytime an individual chooses "Eating >> paying property taxes" I consider that a winning proposition. The fact that this same fate "awaits vast swaths of the population", to me, is a bonus. It is time for a wake up. The strong will survive. The strong will learn to replace the government services with mutual co-operation. There are many stories of the strong doing exactly that in their neighborhoods. Search and ye shall find.
Click to expand...

Agree.

Property taxes are unconstitutional- any revolt is a good one.
 
So , by that percentage , it means anyone planning to stay and has the ability to pay is .No suprise there.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Swordsmyth
Why Property Tax Is Illegal
Replies
12
Views
4K
Snowball
Snowball
PAF
Libertarianism vs. Microlibertarianism
Replies
0
Views
278
PAF
PAF
PAF
L’État, C’est Moi (“I Am the State”).Trumpian Version
Replies
0
Views
94
PAF
PAF
PAF
The Mises-Hoiles Correspondence: What Might Have Been
Replies
0
Views
935
PAF
PAF
PAF
A Big Spender’s League All of His Own
2
Replies
20
Views
2K
acptulsa
acptulsa
Back
Top