"The city is providing water for everybody, and if you don't pay your bill, they're not getting paid."
There are more than $9.1 million worth of water bills due on 11,225 properties on the current tax-sale list. Some of the property owners also owe the city for other services. More than half the water charges are for less than $500, though a few dozen run into the thousands of dollars.
City officials have defended the practice of including overdue water bills in tax sales by saying that many residents would not pay their bills without the threat of losing their homes.
Unsolicited upgrade
Buildings with tax liens as of April 3 ranged from vacant shells appraised at a few thousand dollars or less, to stately residences. There were also shuttered factories and other industrial sites, and a handful of apartment complexes, city records show.
Though they stretch across more than 250 census tracts, the properties tend to cluster in a few areas. In two neighborhoods, Broadway East and Belair-Edison, about 1,300 properties are subject to sale, records show.
The collection process angers Leola Myers, who has owned her Belair-Edison home since 1995 and is listed in city records as owing about $500 in overdue water bills and alley paving fees.
"I'm sick of the city's water bills," she said. "On top of that, they included alley paving. I didn't even ask for it to be done. I didn't ask for it, because I knew I couldn't afford to pay it. It's hard enough to pay the bills we have."
Myers said she is on permanent disability after being injured at her job as an operating room technician at Union Memorial Hospital in 1984. She said a friend recently showed her the newspaper listing of properties up for tax sale, which included her house. Her husband has been out of work after two employers shut down, she said.
She said she borrowed against the value of her disability payments to cover her property taxes, and would have had enough to cover the water bill if late fees hadn't been tacked on.
"I have to try to get the money up for April 28th or I'm going to lose my home, and I'm not going to lose my home over a $173 water bill," she said. "I don't know where I'm going to get the money."
Rather than try to collect back taxes and other debts on their own, many Maryland counties sell the right to collect them to investors in annual auctions. The process is intended to help find new owners for abandoned properties, and to help restore downtrodden neighborhoods.
