How the 'Black Tax' Destroyed African-American Homeownership in Chicago [CityLab.com]

Samantha Sangenito 6/17/154:00 AM

The best time to steal someone’s home is at Christmas.

That’s when folks find their budgets stretched the tightest by the gift-giving season. People put off their bills to focus on family. The holidays are distracting: friends and loved ones come and go, there’s all that merriment. Christmas is the perfect cover for taking a family’s home away from them.

Allan Blair took Lillian Ware’s home away from her on December 27, 1971, two days after Christmas. Legally, he purchased her Evanston home. She owed $41.57 on a lien for a special tax assessment, plus some fees. Blair bought that tax lien at an auction held by Cook County, in the hopes that Ware, an elderly black woman, would fail to pay off the lien within a two-year window.

[For more of this story, written by Kriston Capps, go to http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/06/how-the-black-tax-destroyed-african-american-homeownership-in-chicago/395426/]

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