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Stand and deliver. Your money or your life.


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2019 Jan 17, 3:54am   1,077 views  3 comments

by Al_Sharpton_for_President   ➕follow (5)   💰tip   ignore  

Chicago Seized And Sold Nearly 50,000 Cars Over Tickets Since 2011, Sticking Owners With Debt

Sandra Botello moved to Chicago five years ago for what she called “the opportunities.”

Now 41, she and her children had been evicted from her home in Idaho when her landlord’s property was foreclosed.

The move to Chicago indeed delivered opportunities. She earned an associates degree and then enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and now works as an executive administrative assistant downtown. And, two of her four kids snagged scholarships to private schools.

But her time in Chicago has also been mired with a major hurdle. It started with citations for the city road tax collected through “city stickers.” After failing to keep up with ticket payments, the city seized her car and sold it to a private towing company, only to have none of the sale price applied to her debt.

Botello is not alone.

According to a WBEZ analysis of thousands of towing records and invoices, the city regularly pulls residents into a nexus of ticket-related debt and car seizures that is stunning in its scope.

In 2017 alone, Chicago booted more than 67,000 vehicles for unpaid tickets. In about a third of those cases, the driver couldn’t afford to remove the boot, and the vehicle was later towed to a city impound lot.

Of those 20,000 impounded cars, more than 8,000 ended up like Botello’s: They were sold off, with the owners receiving none of the sale proceeds. Instead, the city and its towing contractor pocketed millions of dollars, while residents were left with ticket debt.

All told, there have been nearly 50,000 of these sales since 2011.

The vast majority of cars bound in these tow-and-sell operations hail from low-income and minority communities on Chicago’s West and South Sides, where experts have said residents are already hard-pressed to pay for effective transportation.

The quick road to losing your car in Chicago

The city has a term for those who owe ticket money: “scofflaws.” It’s a Prohibition-era term that was applied to those who drank illegally — or flouting the law. City officials use the term regularly, conflating the inability to pay debts with criminal activity.

The road to becoming a Chicago scofflaw can be short, starting with workers or contractors sometimes issuing multiple tickets on the same day — against a city ordinance.

Fines accrued from just two or three outstanding tickets will prompt the city’s revenue workers to boot a car. Owners have just 24 hours to pay $100 to remove a boot; hitting that deadline can be difficult for unemployed or underemployed motorists, or those without access to quick credit. If the window’s missed, the car’s towed, and the owner becomes responsible for a $150 towing fee.

Once at the impound, cars can be sold in as little as three weeks, but not before drivers rack up storage and other fees.

Translation: A small financial hole can open into a massive chasm, as the city assesses fees that build each day.

Botello’s story illustrates how thousands of residents get caught in the trap.

She moved to Chicago in 2014. She drove her 2003 Lincoln Continental to her South Shore neighborhood and quickly purchased a city sticker and Illinois license plates. The sticker was only valid for three months, so the city prorated the $86 price to $57.

“I tried getting everything in order,” Botello said. “I like following the law.”

But Botello’s first few months were hard; she hadn’t found a job and was on the fence about whether Chicago was going to work out. Even though her son got a scholarship to Mount Carmel High School, a private school, they still had to pay a $400 registration fee.

She chose to pay for the school registration instead of renewing her city sticker.

That’s when the tickets started. Within 45 days, she received five city sticker citations — at $200 each.

Botello said she couldn’t cobble together enough for the sticker, “so I got another ticket, and I was just getting ticket after ticket.”

She eventually bought another sticker, she said, but “they charged me an additional $60 for being late.”

By this point, she couldn’t afford to pay her outstanding tickets on time. The city added late penalties and collections fees, for a total of $2,934.

According to towing data, Botello’s car was booted on March 16, 2015, and towed the following day — with a valid city sticker on the windshield.

Botello thought that surrendering her car at traffic court would help pay down her debt.

“I went to court, and told them, here’s the keys, sell my car, and whatever you get out of it, put it toward my tickets,” Botello said.

But it doesn’t work that way in Chicago.

One lingering effect is that owners lose their cars but are still saddled with ticket-related debt.

The eventual sale of scofflaw-related cars — again, to the tune of 8,000 cars in 2017 alone — doesn’t wipe out any tickets, towing costs, or storage fees. (The Sun-Times first reported on the city’s sale program in 2004, but those articles have not survived online archiving.)

Here’s what the city’s own website says regarding the seizure of cars for ticket debts: “The signing over or involuntary surrender of your vehicle to the City does not waive or decrease any outstanding debt you owe the City.”

Records show the city sold Botello’s car to United Road Towing, a private contractor, for $138.96 after 33 days in the impound.

“If you have property and can’t pay the city what you owe, and they take your property, the reason that they’re taking your property is because they need to consolidate that debt with that,” Botello said. “They’re a bunch of thieves.”

The $138.96 sale price doesn’t reflect the age and model of Botello’s car (a 2003 Lincoln Continental). Even newer cars are sold for a few hundred dollars or less. Instead, the city sells hundreds of cars monthly to the towing company for the car’s anticipated scrap price of the car.

The Department of Finance, which handles the city’s debt collection and boots, and the Department of Streets and Sanitation, which contracts out the city’s towing, did not dispute any of WBEZ’s findings.

Marjani Williams, a spokeswoman for Streets and Sanitation, said the city does not check the condition of the vehicle before selling it to the towing company, and DSS supplies the contractor with a list of vehicles’ make and year.

Representatives from United Road Towing did not respond to months-worth of inquiries from WBEZ concerning the handling and sale of scofflaw-related cars and the contract that governs the program.

For years, motorists caught in a ticket trap would turn to bankruptcy to get their cars out of the impound. City lawyers have sought to curb the practice. (This was a major factor in an explosion of Chapter 13 bankruptcies in Chicago, according to investigations from ProPublica Illinois.)

But debt is just one problem drivers faced. The more immediate problem was the sudden lack of transportation.

“People have obligations. They have families. They have medical appointments,” said Eric Halvorson, a policy and communications associate for the Chicago Jobs Council.

The nonprofit advocacy group has argued Chicago’s debt-collection practices have hurt access to employment.

“One of the things that we see is that a [license] suspension or taking away a car is really a family sentence,” he said. “It impacts kids’ abilities to get to school.”

Botello said that, in her case, it was hard to run errands without a car.

“It sucked, and we don’t even have a grocery store here, so all of our shopping was over at that dollar store there,” she said. “You got canned food, chips, cookies, donuts, juices, and milk.”

Who’s harmed the most?

The city tickets aggressively for sticker noncompliance as if they’re parking violations, and at rates far higher in low-income neighborhoods, a WBEZ/ProPublica Illinois investigation found.

According to ticket histories vehicles sold off in 2017, half of the tickets received that year were for expired plates and city stickers.

Given that the bulk of so many scofflaw tows and sales involve these types of tickets — and that low-income people simply have a harder time paying off ticket debt — it’s no surprise that these same neighborhoods lose the most cars to the towing program.

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/chicago-seizes-and-sells-cars-over-tickets-sticking-drivers-with-debt/1d73d0c1-0ed2-4939-a5b2-1431c4cbf1dd

Comments 1 - 3 of 3        Search these comments

1   RWSGFY   2019 Jan 17, 5:43am  

"City sticker"? Fucking snakes.
2   HeadSet   2019 Jan 17, 7:05am  

Sounds like Chicago is desperate for funds. And I would not be surprised if the tow company had a "contract" with the city.

That being said, there are a few oddities in the story:
Now 41, she and her children had been evicted from her home in Idaho when her landlord’s property was foreclosed.

Everywhere I know of, whoever forecloses on a rental property must honor any existing leases. This means she could stay in the home until the lease expires and get back the deposit. Nothing stopping her from looking for a new place during that time.

And, two of her four kids snagged scholarships to private schools.
She chose to pay for the school registration instead of renewing her city sticker.


Private school was an incredibly good deal. But using the $400 school registration as an excuse not to pay the $60 sounds ludicrous. Had she paid the $60, none of the rest of the issues would have come about. And I cannot help but think a few details are being left out. Welfare is freely given to single mothers, and that is likely how the college she is taking is paid for. I suspect a disinterested third party managing her funds would have found that $60, but there would have been less money for booze, cigarettes, cel phone, hair and nails. I base this opinion on my experience going with my wife (an elementary school teacher) to the projects to do parent meetings and conferencing. Also, the politically incorrect elephant in the room - where is the father? She has help producing those 4 kids, and that stud (or series of studs) needs to contribute financially to the well being of the children.
3   HeadSet   2019 Jan 17, 7:10am  

DASKAA says
"City sticker"? Fucking snakes.


Actually, this is a common practice. Many cities and counties require a little windshield sticker to be bought every year. And this sticker will not be sold to you unless your property taxes have been paid.

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