NY Judge Orders Halt Of City Of Buffalo Garbage Fee Foreclosures; Homeowners Still On Hook For Administrative Fees

In Buffalo, New York, WIVB-TV Channel 4 reports:

• Hundreds of Buffalo homeowners who hadn't paid their garbage or sewer fees had their homes saved from auction by a judge on Monday. A judge's intervention has spared hundreds of Buffalo residents from losing their homes, but they're still stuck paying hundreds of dollars in foreclosure fees. All of this, over $50 or $100 in back-owed sewer or garbage bills.



• Half of the houses that were supposed to be part of this year's foreclosure auction in the city of Buffalo belong to people whose only crime was being late to pay garbage fees or sewer taxes.



• WNY Law Center supervising attorney Lauren Breen said, "Out of the, I think it was 5,600 properties on the list in January, 52 percent of those properties -- or more than 2,900 of those properties -- were on the list for just owing the garbage fee."



• In some cases, the residents owed the city less than $50. Erie County Judge Thomas Franczyk yanked the properties off the foreclosure list, after the WNY Law Center filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the homeowners last Wednesday.

For more, see Foreclosures over garbage fees halted.

See also, Judge Makes Dramatic Ruling on Buffalo’s Tax Foreclosures.