Feds pay taxes, let evicted 101-year-old keep home Josh Katzenstein/ The Detroit News
Two days after being evicted from her southwest Detroit home of nearly 60 years because of back property taxes, 101-year-old Texana Hollis can move back in. On Wednesday, federal housing spokesman Brian Sullivan said the agency would pay the taxes, remove the padlocks and allow the woman and her two sons to remain in the home on the 8300 block of Carbondale.
"We just to make sure that Mrs. Hollis knows that her home of many years is hers to live in for as long as she wants," Sullivan said.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development foreclosed on her house Monday because one of the woman's sons failed to pay $7,000 in property taxes to keep a reverse mortgage taken out in 2002, despite months of warnings. The delinquent tax bill initially was reported as $59.95 based on information from the county treasurer's office. The eviction garnered national attention and calls from outraged readers asking how they could help the woman.
Her son, Warren Hollis, 64, took out a reverse mortgage for the assessed property value of $32,000, an option HUD offers senior citizens. By 2006, the amount paid to the family exceeded the value of the house, so HUD took control of the mortgage. In June 2010, HUD warned of foreclosure. On Monday, court officers put the family on the street...
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
