Wayne County Illegally Foreclosed on Homes: Lawsuit

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DEARBORN, MI – The Wayne County Treasurer’s Office and several Metro Detroit cities illegally foreclosed on and sold their properties to developers, 18 families alleged Monday in a request for a federal judge to issue an injunction to stop their eviction.

The plaintiffs — who are from Dearborn, Garden Center, Lincoln Park, Redford Township and Wayne — allege in their petition filed in U.S. District Court that the treasurer’s office led them to believe they still had time to save their homes,b were working all the while to illegally take the properties, The Detroit News reports.

Their attorney, Tarek Baydoun, wrote in the complaint that county officials failed to properly notify homeowners of the foreclosure, and blocked them from signing up for payment plans that would have halted foreclosure actions.

“County defendants recklessly, knowingly and/or maliciously engaged in a conspiracy to withhold the required notices and deny payment plans in a manner that was neither lawful nor rational,” the complaint states. “As a result, the plaintiffs and similarly situated individuals lost record title to their properties.”

Retired Treasurer Raymond Wojtowicz, former Chief Deputy Treasurer David Szymanski and three development companies that bought the properties were also named in the complaint, as were the cities and townships of Dearborn, Garden City, Lincoln Park, Redford and Wayne.

Baydoun alleges officials in each jurisdiction “illegally bid, purchased and sold the properties.”

In an e-mail to The Detroit News, Szymanski wrote that his staff explained taxpayer options, “assisting as bet we could in foreclosure avoidance.

“It is indeed unfortunate that property is lost when taxes are not paid but such is the legislatively mandated process,” he wrote. “It is not fair to those who do pay taxes to support government services that others receive those services when their taxes go unpaid.”

The newspaper said calls to city officials involved were not immediately returned.

It’s common in the suburbs for governments to buy foreclosed properties and sell them to developers for a price equal to the unpaid taxes to prevent blight and discourage absentee landlords from buying them at auctions, the newspaper said. Developers are generally required to make improvements on the land, but are allowed to keep the profits those improvements generate.

Baydoun wrote in the petition that his clients, who believed they had worked out payment plans for the back taxes, weren’t aware their homes had been sold until they received eviction notices. Some admitted they had missed payments, but they claimed treasurer’s office workers had led them to believe they had more time to prevent a foreclosure.

The number of properties purchased by local governments in the auction this past fall included 106 in Wayne, 90 in Lincoln Park, 76 in Redford Township, 35 in Dearborn, and 28 in Garden City.

Baydoun said as many as 1,000 property owners may lost their homes due to illegal foreclosures. He has asked U.S. District Judge Judith E. Levy to allow a class action lawsuit.