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1. Matthew Denker says:

   February 22, 2013 at 11:10 am

   This is a terribly unfortunate situation compounded by the fact that she could probably buy her own house back at auction for less than she owes in taxes on it. The community might be better served to do that than to protest.

   Side note that at the current $1,500 a year city tax bill, this is 15 years+ of not paying taxes. That’s a little disheartening.

2. Jim Fraser says:

   February 22, 2013 at 11:44 pm

   Matthew,
   You are absolutely right. The debt of unpaid taxes is hefty. It should never have gone this far. But I also think that the current crisis derives from the bulk sales of tax liens to ATF, a for-profit firm in Florida. But whether the firm or the city (or both) are at fault is not the issue. The big city hammer or the foreclosure factory hammer – no good options for individual cases that fall between the cracks, as Ms. Smith apparently did when she incurred a debilitating medical condition.

   City Hall can’t possibly deal with all exceptional cases effectively. There needs to be an entity somewhere in between, which can negotiate an arrangement suited to the circumstances. Here, that role is filled by Take Back the Land, a group that follows a protest model. Traditionally, the needs gap was filled by neighborhoods, or in larger cities, by what Jane Jacobs referred to as administrative districts. “Death and Life” chapter 21 lays it out. Bottom-up approaches can be more responsive, more pro-active, and less of a drain on city resources.

   My advocacy is focused on the rebuilding of vital neighborhood organizations as foundational to the wellbeing of cities. Which your placemaking activity helps me to do, by the way. I see many costs arising from the demise of traditional neighborhoods – this issue is only one. The current fiscal squeeze is another, perhaps the most visible. By imposing one-size-fits-all solutions on neighborhoods from above, city governments are merely shifting problems around.

   I would much rather see the city in the role of helping neighborhoods to organize, then devolving all feasible authority onto them. It’s what Andres Duany refers to as ‘subsidiarity’. The enabling technologies are well in place. Institutional momentum and a lack of vision seem to be the only impediments to the coming transformation of urbanism.

3. Matthew Denker says:

   February 23, 2013 at 10:17 pm

   Well said. Community building has to be the answer. The world is made of special cases, and each deserves attention. You are right, though, the current tax base does not support that attention. Thank you for a really excellent comment.

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