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Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

theguardian.com

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Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#41

Post by fidotron »

themartorana wrote: post #40
bluedino wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the insane amounts that municipalities are paying towards the massive pensions and benefits for retired workers. How many existing police officers are cut in order to pay the pensions of the previously retired?

Edit: rant ahead, not aimed directly at bluedino I will never understand this. I agree life-time pensions are unsustainable. I argue constantly for a) all new public employees being enrolled in a 401k and pensions being phased out and b) offering younger workers buy-outs, allowing them to invest their contributions themselves in reward for opting out of the pension system. But that said - every pensioner out there wo…

I would share this position.

Montreal has a particularly bad case going on, where for a large part of the 90s it showed on the city employees payslips that they were making pension contributions, but in reality the city just kept the money and said they'd pay it later (a "pension holiday"), but never did. The pensions in question do happen to be unreasonably large, but that was the problem that should have been dealt with at the time and not just kicked down the road. The city now want to get out of paying, which is a ludicrous position, in the same way that expecting new employees to get such generous pensions is insane.

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#42

Post by jordanb »

themartorana wrote: post #40
bluedino wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the insane amounts that municipalities are paying towards the massive pensions and benefits for retired workers. How many existing police officers are cut in order to pay the pensions of the previously retired?

Edit: rant ahead, not aimed directly at bluedino I will never understand this. I agree life-time pensions are unsustainable. I argue constantly for a) all new public employees being enrolled in a 401k and pensions being phased out and b) offering younger workers buy-outs, allowing them to invest their contributions themselves in reward for opting out of the pension system. But that said - every pensioner out there wo…

Why is a pension "unsustainable" and what's the difference between a pension and a 401k that makes the latter "sustainable"?

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#43

Post by icebraining »

rodgerd wrote: post #38
mcgarveymr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One of the things linking them: lack of information. Low-income homeowners are eligible for tax exemptions. While many residents would meet the requirements, they must file requests before their taxes are due, neither of which are readily known pieces of information, Mullane says. Owners can buy their homes back with debts cleared at auction for $500 as a solution of last resort." It seems the problem is a lack of c…

> From the city's point of view it is better to try to get as much money back on the debt by auctioning the house instead of trying to settle at some arranged value with the debtor, Which is the kind of sociopathic behaviour I'd expect from a sleazy corporate. It's meant to be public service, not public pillaging.

On the other hand, the money foregone to help the debtor is money that will be missed in schools, homeless shelters, road repairs, etc.

Barring corruption, which I never rule out but I have no idea if it's an incentive here, it isn't fair to say there's a right and a sociopathic choice. It's a hard trade-off.

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#44

Post by pfisch »

themartorana wrote: post #40
bluedino wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the insane amounts that municipalities are paying towards the massive pensions and benefits for retired workers. How many existing police officers are cut in order to pay the pensions of the previously retired?

Edit: rant ahead, not aimed directly at bluedino I will never understand this. I agree life-time pensions are unsustainable. I argue constantly for a) all new public employees being enrolled in a 401k and pensions being phased out and b) offering younger workers buy-outs, allowing them to invest their contributions themselves in reward for opting out of the pension system. But that said - every pensioner out there wo…

I agree with you but I would like to point out that the US was basically founded on the idea of getting out of a bad contract instead of paying the money we owed. It has been spun in a lot of other ways because yay america, but really we didn't want to pay England back for financing the French and Indian War and for ongoing stationing of troops because of that conflict. So we didn't and that was that.

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#45

Post by thrownaway2424 »

themartorana wrote: post #40
bluedino wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the insane amounts that municipalities are paying towards the massive pensions and benefits for retired workers. How many existing police officers are cut in order to pay the pensions of the previously retired?

Edit: rant ahead, not aimed directly at bluedino I will never understand this. I agree life-time pensions are unsustainable. I argue constantly for a) all new public employees being enrolled in a 401k and pensions being phased out and b) offering younger workers buy-outs, allowing them to invest their contributions themselves in reward for opting out of the pension system. But that said - every pensioner out there wo…

The question is whether the pensioner provided enough benefit during their career to justify their pension. In a lot of cities the retirement benefits are completely out of proportion to the benefit provided by the government employee. The social contract works both ways. We're supposed to provide for the security of old people in retirement, but they were also supposed to leave a better future for young people. If the former people failed to uphold their end of the social contract -- and the retired government employees of Detroit have obviously failed completely in this regard -- then why should the current working-age people of Detroit be expected to hold their pensions as inviolable?

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#46

Post by tedunangst »

jordanb wrote: post #42
themartorana wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: rant ahead, not aimed directly at bluedino I will never understand this. I agree life-time pensions are unsustainable. I argue constantly for a) all new public employees being enrolled in a 401k and pensions being phased out and b) offering younger workers buy-outs, allowing them to invest their contributions themselves in reward for opting out of the pension system. But that said - every pensioner out there wo…

Why is a pension "unsustainable" and what's the difference between a pension and a 401k that makes the latter "sustainable"?

Pensions were underfunded. If you underfund your own 401k, that's on you. The pensioned people were told they didn't need to save for retirement because they had a pension, and so many of them didn't.

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#47

Post by fidotron »

pfisch wrote: post #44
themartorana wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: rant ahead, not aimed directly at bluedino I will never understand this. I agree life-time pensions are unsustainable. I argue constantly for a) all new public employees being enrolled in a 401k and pensions being phased out and b) offering younger workers buy-outs, allowing them to invest their contributions themselves in reward for opting out of the pension system. But that said - every pensioner out there wo…

I agree with you but I would like to point out that the US was basically founded on the idea of getting out of a bad contract instead of paying the money we owed. It has been spun in a lot of other ways because yay america, but really we didn't want to pay England back for financing the French and Indian War and for ongoing stationing of troops because of that conflict. So we didn't and that was that.

Not really. Had the colonists had better representation in parliament then the case for separation would have been non-existent, but as it stood even Burke, who famously opposed the French Revolution, thought they had a point.

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#48

Post by tedunangst »

pfisch wrote: post #44
themartorana wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: rant ahead, not aimed directly at bluedino I will never understand this. I agree life-time pensions are unsustainable. I argue constantly for a) all new public employees being enrolled in a 401k and pensions being phased out and b) offering younger workers buy-outs, allowing them to invest their contributions themselves in reward for opting out of the pension system. But that said - every pensioner out there wo…

I agree with you but I would like to point out that the US was basically founded on the idea of getting out of a bad contract instead of paying the money we owed. It has been spun in a lot of other ways because yay america, but really we didn't want to pay England back for financing the French and Indian War and for ongoing stationing of troops because of that conflict. So we didn't and that was that.

I think the U.S. was also founded on the idea that revolutions are exceptional events.

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#49

Post by mcgarveymr »

rodgerd wrote: post #38
mcgarveymr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One of the things linking them: lack of information. Low-income homeowners are eligible for tax exemptions. While many residents would meet the requirements, they must file requests before their taxes are due, neither of which are readily known pieces of information, Mullane says. Owners can buy their homes back with debts cleared at auction for $500 as a solution of last resort." It seems the problem is a lack of c…

> From the city's point of view it is better to try to get as much money back on the debt by auctioning the house instead of trying to settle at some arranged value with the debtor, Which is the kind of sociopathic behaviour I'd expect from a sleazy corporate. It's meant to be public service, not public pillaging.

I understand your point of view, but given the city is not a corporation but an entity that is supposed to provide basic municipal services to all of its citizens, services which it has struggled to provide due to a disastrous financial situation, I can't really agree with it. Detroit has struggled to provide such services for years now and just recently emerged from bankruptcy proceedings. It's not really in a position to just take what it can get when police, fire, and EMS response times are well above the national average and public transit can't meet its posted schedules.

From what I read in the article, at the very least Detroit needs to do a lot better job at communicating what is owed by property owners and working with them on payment plans. If the property owner can't pay, then Detroit should get whatever it can out of the property however the government sees fit.

Re: Detroit gentrifiers face daunting task buying $500 homes evicting poor residents

#50

Post by tedunangst »

jedberg wrote: post #33
tedunangst wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the owner willing to simply not pay their taxes? (We're missing a lot from the story.)

I'm assuming they don't have the $14K, but have $7K.

Which they could have taken to the auction. Who knows? Maybe they could have paid it off for only $5k.
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