Disabled Veteran Fights City of Baltimore After Family Home Sold Over Unpaid Property Taxes

Imagine losing the family home for which your father paid a dollar ... over $12,000 in taxes?

Tony Smothers is gearing up to battle to city of Baltimore after his family home was sold due to unpaid property taxes, CBS News reports.

Smothers’ attorney, Thiru Vignarajah, says the house was sold to a Philadelphia-based company due to $12,000 in unpaid taxes dating back to May 2021. Now, with the support of his neighbors, the 61-year-old veteran is pleading for help to get the house his family has ever been able to call home back.

“My father bought this house for a $1 for me and my siblings in the hopes we would be living here forever,” Smothers said. The home was built and purchased by his father for $1 decades ago as part of the “dollar homes program.”

Smothers has cerebral palsy but lives independently and works as a chef for Towson University. He says he was heartbroken when he found out the house, worth $200,000, was sold at auction for less than $80,000. Vignarajah has vowed to get it back for his client.

“Here we are some 50 years later, Tony Smothers, who, along with his siblings, inherited this house from his father, is on the brink of having this house stripped away from him, ripped away from him through a foreclosure that followed a tax sale,” Vignarajah said.

“Until the City of Baltimore understands what they are taking away, for the precious goal of getting a few more tax dollars, they do not understand the fabric they are ripping apart.”

This has been a growing problem in the city of Baltimore, with other residents facing similar issues. According to WMAR 2 News, City Council President Nick Mosby has supported efforts to remove owner-occupied homes, especially when the owners are veterans, disabled or elderly residents, from tax sale foreclosures. Mosby believes the process should be revised to make it less of a predatory situation. In his tenure as a state delegate, Mosby passed legislation to end the practice of taking homes solely based on late water bills.