Baltimore Mayor Jack Young announced Wednesday the city’s new tax sale date. It will be July 20 instead of the originally scheduled date of May 18.
Under the mayor’s order, thousands of homeowners whose properties are on the city’s tax sale list now have until June 30th to pay down their tax bills and get the properties off that list. The original date was April 30. Once that date passes, however, the city won’t accept any more payments, says Amy Hennen of Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service.
And someone could lose their home over a tax bill that totals as little as $1,000. WYPR recently reported on a woman who lost her job because of illness and was in jeopardy of losing her property because she owed $2,200 in property taxes.
"Most of the owner-occupied properties [with tax liens] are in low income areas," Hennen says.
Lester Davis, Mayor Young’s spokesman, says the dates were postponed to help property owners during the coronavirus pandemic. But, he said, "part of the difficulty is we don’t know how long the state of emergency will last."
But for many low-income residents, the state of emergency will last much longer than the pandemic itself
