obviously.

altho its a cartoon to say it was over $400 - I dont know the facts, but it sounds like a cascade of bills someone could not afford to pay. The $400 bill was just a trigger of a series of other events and problems.

because we can't know the actual facts, I am looking at this as a theoretical case. no body thinks it's wrong to throw a healthy person capable of earning the money out of a house for not paying their local taxes.

so the theoretical problem is - are we a society that expects our old people to go begging for help? begging to churches, begging to the government, begging to family, begging to strangers?

why didn't the church, if it was so good, find that old woman in trouble and help her, without her begging?

is it the begging that we want? would the begging have made the church feel better about itself? are we a society that now needs to be begged to do something kind?

lol all this bluster and posturing, just to avoid having to put a thoughtful solution on the table.

as far as i know I am of no consequence to you.

I already told you what I do for a living, I'm an adult affiliate. Made a lot of money in the easy days, galleries, freesites, seo networks, blogs. I do some computer services on the side these days, the adult biz aint what it used to be, but still it's better than the straight world. i'm an independent with computer and writing skills. Thats all.

I edited that down after I wrote it.

Again...When you keep babbling about my "solution"...I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. All I ever said in this thread was that it's WRONG for the government to take a person's property and home. Especially older people on a fixed income. I also pointed out that Social Security is supposed to be your OWN money that the govt. forced you to give them so that you would have a retirement and that it is NOT welfare.

This thread is about people losing their homes when they can't pay property tax. I already gave my "solution" ABOLISH PROPERTY TAX

Other than that I have ZERO idea why you are insulting me. It makes you look like a bit of a pompous jerk.

There is no "solution" when the govt. forgets it is supposed to work for the people and not the other way around. Any "solution" I have would simply get me thrown in prison for breaking the law by not paying my taxes or having my home and property taken for not paying my property tax.

Now why don't YOU come down from your high horse and have an intelligent debate without acting like you are "smarter" than me or anyone else in this thread...you're not.

you sound like a bitter broke old man, just saying. you are welcome to feel sorry for whomever you want but feeling sorry for someone doesn't change the circumstances or excuse anyone for thier actions. i wouldn't get thrown out of my house if i couldn't afford it. i would have sold it and started renting before it got to that point, i am responsible. i wouldn't feel sorry for myself if i did something stupid so i wouldn't expect anyone to feel sorry for me.

but you fail to realize what you just said. you said the house is owned outright? then like i said she should have sold it. she would have then had $85,000 in the bank and could easily afford to pay rent and utilities the rest of her life. or she could have got a loan being that she owed no money on her home, reverse mortgage, anything. she wasn't some helpless old women who had no options like you make her out to sound. she chose to ignore it and she paid the consequences. the only crime here according to you is that someone had to move out of a home that they lived in for their whole lives. some times people have to move. its not like she was going to be homeless. she could have sold her house and moved into an apartment.

there is no anger here, just the facts of life. some people just can't seem to handle them and want to cry for others who make stupid mistakes.

would it have been begging if she would have gone to a bank and got a loan? almost everyone who owns a house has a mortgage why would it have been a big deal for her to have a mortgage too. she was 85 years old, had no money but owned her house outright. then she easily could have fixed her problem, the money she would have got from a loan could have paid all of her utilities, taxes and loan payment for the rest of her life. it's not like she is going to live much longer anyways, she is already 85. problem solved. lots of old people do reverse mortgages too. smart people solve problems, ignorant people make excuses and feel sorry for others.

I'm not DirtyWhiteBoy, but I'll chime in here.

The utility in question was the woman's sewer/water. Now, it doesn't require all that much in the way of thought to acknowledge that her living without running water wasn't exactly a picnic. Clearly, if she had the money she would pay the damn sewer bill.

You can't squeeze blood out of a rock.

Turn off all of her utilities if you must (I'm speaking rhetorically here), but for crying out loud don't throw an old woman out onto the street.

I don't know how some, supposedly respectable, people in this country can look at themselves in the mirror.

Checking REALTOR site, I can't believe how cheap the houses in USA are...

But this is a neighbor I would like to live on, it looks so clean and nice.

How much does one of those house cost?

How many adult sites and how much SPAM and BLACK-HAT ewhoring and CAM FAKENESS PONZI SCHEMES I need to buy a house there?

http://s15.postimage.org/4g4fbqas9/image.jpg

she owned the house with no mortgage. she could have got a loan to pay her bills. there was a lot of blood there, she didn't use it. she probably had more worth then a lot of people posting here.

doesn't matter how cheap they are if you have no money to buy one. you must do 2930 cam fakes, 2934083 hours ewhoring and 301 ponzi schemes, get cracking!

And yet she was living in that house with no running water. What does that tell you?

It tells me that she was too confused, maybe a bit senile, maybe more than a bit senile.

In any case, she clearly wasn't gaming the system and she deserved better.

Shouldn't that be a choice each individual gets to make?

I don't see how not paying a utility should cause anyone to lose their home. The two are unrelated. That is like saying if you don't pay your internet bill, the internet company will come to your house and confiscate all of your computers. That wouldn't be right, would it?

If you don't want to pay an electric bill, then it should be your choice to install an alternative form of power. Or use none at all and live by candle light and batteries. Your choice.

If you don't want to pay a water / sewer bill, don't. Or drill a well and use compost toilets. Your choice.

You don't have to be online or use a phone.

The ONLY thing anyone in the USA has to do, is pay property tax and keep up on their mortgage if their home is not paid for. Everything else should be a choice.

If I don't pay my utility bills here, they just turn them off. That's it. That's how it has worked throughout history, even in the USA, until now.


Exactly. You don't pay the bill, they turn it off. It should end there.

So then you go into collections for an unpaid utility bill. You go to court, they make you work out a payment plan or garnish your wages, or maybe even settle the payment for a percentage if you can prove you have fallen on hard times, or in some cases where you can prove you simply don't have the money, dismiss the bill. But you should never, ever lose your home over it.

Now, if this lady was behind on her property taxes for a year or two, this would be a different story. However, I still think property taxes are BS. What that means is none of you are really land owners. You are all just really renting the land from your masters. If you are a true land owner, you would not lose your land if you didn't pay tax on it. But since that will never happen in the USA, at the very least, there should be a point where you no longer have to pay taxes on it. Perhaps after 10 years of paying taxes, you're in the clear. Or maybe you pay taxes for as long as you pay a mortgage. Once the mortgage is paid, you own it free and clear, no taxes, you can never lose that land to anyone. Otherwise, it's not yours and it never was. You've been duped, again.


Your city going broke is not due to anything YOU did. It is because they can not manage the city's finances. It is their fault, but you are paying for it, just as you are paying for the greed of your government, and your children will continue to pay for that greed long after you are dead and turned to dust.


I don't bitch about how they provide less. I don't depend on anyone, expect them to help me, or beg for assistance. I'm on my own and I like it. Americans live on crutches. I prefer to stand on my own two feet.

If that is true, you guys are truly fucked and things are much worse than previously thought.

They would hang a lot of people, and rightfully so.

It's not much better, but I read the entire story on CNN, where they say it was a sewer bill.


Good luck with all that. I'm guessing you're not even allowed to drill your own water well where most of you live.

Water well, solar power, compost toilets, screw them. :2 cents:


Yep. The fun is just getting started.

Yep. Best decision I've ever made.

I found a solution, and it was moving. Now I own something, free and clear, no property tax, and if I don't want to pay for a utility, they just shut it off. That is how it's supposed to work.

i don't begin to know why she chose to not pay the bill, it would just be pure speculation on anyone's part. everyone is trying to make excuses for her, not having the means to pay is for sure not a valid excuse. how do you even know she was still living there?

That last post of yours was top notch DWB :thumbsup

https://gfy.com/showpost.php?p=19063650&postcount=148

you do have the choice to use or not use the utilities.

in this situation it sounds like the county was running the sewerage company, a government entity. while that might not satisfy you, it is different from a private company and what their recourse is for uncollected debts.


again you can do this if you want to. but instead she chose to use a service then not pay for it.

that is how it works here too, but since it sounds like the sewerage company was run by the county they have greater recourse to collect than a private company does. they must be able to send you into collections, then lien your property, then force a sale. a private company stops at liening your property.



property tax is not bs, property tax is where most of the money is collected by the county for the police and fire department, schools, among many other things. if you stop collecting property taxes they would have to increase something else to make up for it. i don't think they would just shut down the schools and fire department so people wouldn't have to pay their property tax any more. having a mortgage should have noting to do with property taxes. some states give people exemptions on property taxes if the value of their home is low, so they don't have to pay any property taxes.

when you buy an item at the store and you pay taxes are you being owned by the man?

when you get your paycheck and a lot of money is missing are you getting duped by the man?

Property Taxes
Taxes on land and the buildings on it are the biggest source of revenue for local governments. They are not imposed by states but by the tens of thousands of cities, townships, counties, school districts and other assessing jurisdictions.

The state’s role is to specify the maximum rate on the market value of the property, or a percentage of it, as the legal standard for the local assessors to follow. The local assessor determines the value to be taxed. You can’t escape property taxes in any state. But you can find significantly low rates in certain parts of the country.

Most states give residents over a certain age a break on their property taxes. With some taxes, you’ll need a relatively low income to qualify. Forty states provide either property tax credits or homestead exemptions that limit the value of assessed property subject to tax.

There may be other tax breaks available, depending on where you live. All 50 states offer some type of property tax relief program, such as freezes that will lock in the assessed value of your property once you reach a certain age, or deferral of taxes until the homeowner moves or dies. They ultimately have to be paid. In addition, counties and municipalities often have their own property tax relief plans.

Retirees with low incomes and high housing costs may face property tax bills that are higher than they can manage. Some states target property tax relief to those homeowners bearing the greatest burden. Property tax reform that takes into account a homeowner’s ability to pay, such as a so-called “property tax circuit breaker,” can better protect low-income homeowners from rising property taxes that accompany rising property values. Targeted property tax relief avoids sharp reductions in funding for locally provided public services and inequities based solely on date of purchase.

■A property tax circuit breaker prevents property taxes from “overloading” a taxpayer. Under a typical circuit breaker, the state sets a maximum percentage of income that an eligible family can be expected to pay in property taxes. If property taxes exceed this limit, the state then provides a rebate or credit to the taxpayer.
■Currently, of the 31 states and the District of Columbia with circuit breakers for homeowners, only six and the District of Columbia permit all households to participate in the program without regard to age.
Other property tax relief strategies that may be used to target property tax relief include homestead exemptions which exempt a certain amount of a home’s value from taxation, credits to rebate a certain percentage of taxes paid, and deferral programs to allow low-income elderly homeowners to defer payment of property taxes until property is sold.

that method works well in third world countries. how is your roads, schools, fire deportment, police there? you get what you pay for. the government in your area could also take away your land at any time for any reason they could make up.