13-09-09 US: Robbing of the People in the Robber Baron Revival Era

Washington Post

This man owed $134 in property taxes. The District sold the lien to
an investor who foreclosed on his $197,000house and sold it. He and many other homeowners like him were
LEFT WITH NOTHING.

On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.

Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered. By sundown, he had nowhere to go.

All because he didn’t pay a $134 property tax bill.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/09/08/left-with-nothing/