STEP FORWARD - Shriver Center

By John Bouman, President

Nine years ago, Chicagoan Mark Emerson left his job with a large company that offered group health coverage to pursue the American dream and start his own business. He did not know that this would begin his ordeal of what he now calls “being charged back into the stone age” as a customer of the private health insurance market. Mark and his wife pay more in health care costs than they do on their mortgage payments and real estate taxes. Ironically, Mark and his wife are healthy people, but their health insurance costs still have escalated. Though he has reached the point where he can no longer afford his premiums, Mark is unwilling to drop coverage and face the potential nightmare of going without insurance. He feels stuck, and help is nowhere to be found. (more…)

By Sam Tuttle, Housing Staff Attorney

Increasingly, homeowners across the country are facing the loss of their homes not simply through foreclosure but because they cannot keep up with their property taxes. 

As in many states, Illinois homeowners who are delinquent in their taxes may lose possession of their homes to private parties who pay the homeowners’ delinquent taxes, rather than paying the market value. The private party, or tax purchaser, then takes ownership, irrespective of the years the homeowner may have been making payments on the home. Consequently, homeowners who owed less than $1,000 in unpaid taxes have lost their homes due to a tax delinquency, even though the equity in their homes was 30 or 40 times that.  (more…)