You Want These People In Charge Of Your Healthcare?

Home snatched over $1.63 has miraculous resolution

According to the paper, the saga began in 1996 when the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office mailed a $1.63 property tax bill for the Atwoods' home in Slidell, La., a suburb of New Orleans.

Though the couple had never moved, the bill was returned to the sheriff's office, because their official address had changed due to a postal system revision.

The Atwoods learned of the nightmare in 2000 when they discovered their four-bedroom, two-bath home – which they had owned mortgage-free since 1968 – had been sold behind their backs in 1997 through a tax sale for the $1.63 in unpaid taxes, plus 10 cents interest and $125 in costs associated with the sale.

"The sheriff's office could have easily found us," Dolores Atwood said. "We're in the phone book. We didn't go anywhere. ... And we never thought about telling the assessor's office about our address change because we've never had to pay property taxes before."

She says the house previously was exempt from property taxes under the state's homestead provision, meaning there had never been any tax bill. But a new assessment had pushed the value assigned to the home above the exemption level by $100.

The government workers involved in this should be in jail. They still never did the right thing, it took a private individual to step up.