Protesters gathered in front of the Detroit home of Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree Thursday demanding he halt next week's tax foreclosure auction in light of a study showing the majority of Detroiters have had their tax bills improperly assessed in recent years, heightening their chance of being foreclosed.
Chanting "Sabree has the power to stop illegal foreclosures," the group of a few dozen protesters got the attention of the treasurer, who at one point came out of his Palmer Park mansion to make the case that his hands are tied by a state law requiring homes with several years of back taxes to be seized and sent to auction.
[content-1] About 800 owner-occupied homes and 1,100 renter-occupied homes in Detroit will be put up for sale starting Sept. 5. And though that's fewer occupied homes than have gone to the tax auction in any year since the recession, the protesters argue the chance that even a single one of those homes had its taxable value overassessed is enough reason to stop the process until the problem of "illegal" tax foreclosures can be solved.
As most media outlets scurried past the gates lining Sabree's property to hear him speak on his front porch, the co-author of the study that found the tax assessments illegal stood on the sidewalk explaining her research.…