Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Jeanne Schoenfelder, Staff Attorney in the Foreclosure Prevention and Home Equity Preservation Project at Legal Aid Society
0:22:22
·
3 min
Jeanne Schoenfelder from the Legal Aid Society testified on the impact of tax lien sales on homeowners and communities, arguing for reforms to protect vulnerable property owners. She emphasized the need for longer timeframes to resolve issues, more accessible tax exemption programs, and the removal of class one properties from the tax lien sale.
- Argued that tax class one properties should not be included in tax lien sales due to disproportionate harm to historically discriminated communities
- Highlighted challenges in resolving complex title and personal issues within short timeframes, especially for elderly or heir property owners
- Recommended improvements to tax exemption programs, including more outreach, rolling enrollment, and reduced recertification requirements for certain homeowners
Jeanne Schoenfelder
0:22:22
Thank you.
0:22:22
Good morning.
0:22:23
My name is Jean Schoenfelder.
0:22:25
I'm a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society within the foreclosure prevention and home equity preservation project.
0:22:33
Our mission is to preserve affordable homeownership and challenge abusive lending practices, preserve equity, and prevent foreclosure, including those caused by tax liens.
0:22:46
So we argue that any task force recommendations should further consider the sales impact on homeowners and communities.
0:22:55
Fundamentally, we believe that tax class one properties don't belong in the tax lien sale.
0:23:01
The sale further harms communities that have historically faced discrimination and disinvestment.
0:23:06
And the financial benefit of including these properties is outweighed by the harm, especially because as soon as you post this list of properties that are distressed, all of these homeowners immediately face scams and predatory lending.
0:23:27
And so it's this huge class of people that may not even belong in the tax sale but immediately face these pressures.
0:23:37
Assuming that these homes stay in the lien sale, we would we argue that the time frame for considering the properties to be removed is too short.
0:23:48
We really problems, the sort of the title issues and the personal and financial issues that cause these debts are very, challenging to resolve in a short time frame.
0:23:59
So this could include things like, you know, you may have a homeowner with capacity issues.
0:24:04
You have older people who have been struggling for years and there are just these major interventions that need to happen that can't happen quickly enough.
0:24:14
We deal with a lot of like heirs issues and those simply just simply can't be resolved in a short time frame.
0:24:21
It can also take these families a significant amount of time to realize there's a problem in the first place.
0:24:27
And then yeah for the current year's tax lien sale we're seeing homeowners who still aren't aware.
0:24:35
We're seeing homeowners who are still struggling with the Department of Finance process.
0:24:40
As Rachel pointed out, the sort of like ad hoc solutions that we're supposed to be seeking out for individual homeowners.
0:24:48
Like can we do that for thousands of people over the course of three months?
0:24:51
That's very challenging.
0:24:52
And it requires an advocate to be in place in the first place, which it takes times for homeowners to seek out assistance.
0:25:00
So it's just it's simply untenable for many people to get this assistance in the first place.
0:25:05
The last thing is that we would we would really like tax exemption programs to be more accessible so that fewer homeowners accumulate tax debt and so more homeowners do not end up on the tax lien list in the first place.
0:25:20
So that would be more outreach, especially to first time homeowners, recent heirs.
0:25:26
And then some of the other issues would be like rolling or quarterly enrollment in some of the tax exemption programs as opposed to annual enrollment.
0:25:37
And then, you know, the recertification requirement is also a big problem for older and disabled homeowners.
0:25:43
So if that, you know, could be limited or removed for those homeowners who have permanent disabilities or, you know, limited incomes that are eligibility is unlikely to change.
0:25:54
That would be a big improvement.
0:25:56
Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify.