Some 11,600 tax-foreclosed homes with sky-high water bills went up for sale Wednesday at Wayne County’s annual auction, Joel Kurth reports in the Detroit News.
The water bills at the homes total $21.5 million. That’s an average of $1,600 apiece, while 112 of them have bills of $10,000 or more and 484 have bills of at least $5,000, county data show.
And the records likely reflect a fraction of the truly big bills on abandoned homes. The Detroit News was only able to examine the records of homes eligible for the auction after three years of tax delinquencies. Officials at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department denied a Freedom of Information Act request for data on all residential delinquencies, citing privacy.
Water department officials admit they’ll probably never collect the debts, which soon could become the problem of a regional authority announced Tuesday to oversee the department.
Kurth identified the biggest bill as a $72,579 past-due account on at a tiny ranch at 9250 Sussex on the northwest side.
The 876-square-foot house has one bathroom. The front door is unlocked and the exterior shows no sign of water leaks. County records show the vast majority of its bill, $68,000, was accrued last year.
That’s three years after its owner died.
