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When a homeowner faces a fine and doesn't pay. Some states allow local governments to take

homes in response to pay those fines. And in many cases, governments keep virtually all of

the proceeds from the sale of that home. Christina Barton is an attorney at the Pacific

Legal Foundation. She calls this process home equity theft. Even here at the

State Policy Network annual meeting, I will say the term home equity theft and people

who are engaged in public policy don't know what that is and it seems like it's it's really an under-appreciated issue.

Describe what it is and what it means for homeowners.

Yeah, so I actually didn't even know about home equity theft until a few years ago. I read an

interesting decision out of a federal court in Washington, D.C. and what happened was there's

an elderly gentleman there who had

dementia and so he had missed one of his tax bills, owed about $200 as I recall on the bill and was shocked when he was evicted from his own home

and investors had purchased it for pennies on the dollar and even though his debt was relatively small the government

took this property and gave it away for next to nothing and the former owner got

nothing out of it. So that's how I learned about it.

...