Letter: Mayor Scott must protect Baltimore homeowners from tax sale

Mayor Brandon Scott must act now to protect thousands of Baltimore homeowners at risk of losing their homes in this year’s tax sale. In just a few weeks, nearly 4,000 city residents — many of them seniors and longtime homeowners — could lose everything over property tax debts as low as $750. Most of these homeowners own their homes outright and live on fixed incomes.

In previous years, Mayor Scott rightly pulled owner-occupied homes from tax sale. He knows the devastating impact of this process. Yet this year, he’s been silent.

That silence is creating panic in vulnerable communities already burdened by inflation, job insecurity and uncertainty around Social Security. Our elected officials must recognize that our strained social support systems cannot absorb the costs we would incur as a community if these homeowners are pushed into homelessness. The best way we can care for our neighbors is to pull them from tax sale, connect them with the tax credits they are eligible for and improve our city’s billing infrastructure.

Let’s be clear. Baltimore’s tax sale is a modern tool of wealth extraction that disproportionately targets Black homeowners and adds to the harm caused by decades of unfair housing practices like segregation, redlining and predatory lending.

The Baltimore Banner has exposed the oppressive nature of Baltimore’s tax sale in its own investigation of the city’s failings, a pending lawsuit challenging the tax sale system’s constitutionality and the ease with which city staff can manipulate tax bills.

There are real solutions. The city could offer monthly billing, payment plans and better outreach to connect residents with available tax credits. But year after year, progress stalls while homeowners suffer and predatory investors benefit.

Mayor Scott must once again remove owner-occupied homes from the tax sale and commit to fixing this broken system once and for all.

Megan Good is an Equal Justice Works fellow with Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service.