Home Equity Theft: A Right Without a Just Remedy

Several local governments throughout the country have confiscated homeowners’ real property for overdue real property taxes, sold those properties to investors at a discount, and pocketed millions of dollars in profits from the sales. The victims of such “home equity theft” are disproportionately elderly, African American homeowners in gentrified urban communities. One such victim, Geraldine Tyler, a vulnerable ninety-four-year-old African American woman living in a nursing home, claimed that the government’s taking of her property’s value violated the U.S. Constitution. In response, both a federal district court and a federal appellate court denied her claim, declaring that she lacked a cause of action.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court in Tyler v. Hennepin County held that Ms. Tyler does have a cause of action, based on the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, noting that the state’s enabling statute effected a “classic taking.” This essay argues that the Tyler Court failed to provide Ms. Tyler with a just remedy as dictated by the U.S. Constitution, as well as by a fundamental principle of common law jurisprudence, which states that for every right, there is a remedy (hereinafter “the rights/remedy principle”).