Boston Globe: "‘Home equity theft’ in Massachusetts is the focus of federal lawsuit"

"In 2017, the city of Greenfield targeted Stephen Woodbridge’s property, which totaled almost 20 acres and included a rambling 10-room house, for unpaid taxes of a little less than $6,000.

Four years later, after making numerous complex and arcane court filings, the city succeeded in gaining legal ownership of a property that had been in the Woodbridge family for 70 years.

Woodbridge was quickly evicted, and the city sold his house and six surrounding acres for $270,000 at auction. The city added Woodbridge’s other 13 wooded acres to a contiguous city-owned park without compensating him.

The city reaped a tidy cash profit of at least $220,000 — the $270,000 sale price at auction minus the $50,000 Woodbridge owed in taxes, interest, and other costs run up while the tax-taking case moved through the system. Woodbridge’s debt had ballooned almost tenfold since 2017 because he was charged fees for the city’s attorneys plus 16 percent interest on his debt — as permitted by law."

Continue reading the article online (subscription maybe required)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/25/business/home-equity-theft-federal-lawsuit/

Al Norman is pictured near Stephen Woodbridge’s former Greenfield property Wednesday. Norman is a community activist fighting against so-called "home equity theft," when municipalities take all the home equity in a house where the back taxes are only a fraction of the property's value. MATTHEW CAVANAUGH/FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE