Even government officials aren't immune to foreclosure.
Michigan State Senator Tupac Hunter of Detroit is facing foreclosure on a home he bought more than a decade ago, The Detroit News reports. The five-year Senate Chamber veteran and minority floor leader says he’s been unable to sell or rent the house because of the large number of abandoned and burned-out homes in the area.
Those empty homes have become enough of a problem that Detroit Mayor Dave Bing announced plans a few years back to tear down 10,000 of them. There are roughly 90,000 abandoned homes in the city.
A renter had previously been paying Hunter $800 a month toward the $80,000 mortgage he took out in 1999 but decided to save money by buying a home across the street for between $5,000 to $8,000, according to Hunter. That's just under the median sale price of Detroit homes, which increased to $9,000 in April, according to Michigan real estate listing service Realcomp.
Michigan ranks among the top ten states for highest rate of foreclosures. As such, Hunter isn’t the only Detroit official to face foreclosure in a city that’s been one of the hardest hit by the housing crisis. City Council President Charles Pugh entered foreclosure in January for the third time in five years, according to MLive. And State Senator Bert Johnson of Highland Park was foreclosed on in 2005, The Detroit News reports.
It's not just Michigan officials facing foreclosures, though. U.S. Representative Laura Richardson of California has also faced housing trouble. Her foreclosure problems made it all the way to the House Ethics Committee in 2008 on allegations of special treatment when her bank rescinded the sale of her foreclosed home, Politico reports. The Ethics Committee cleared her of wrongdoing, but Richardson defaulted on her mortgage again two years later, according to LAWeekly.