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| Richard and Leonette Sukeforth |
Gov. Paul LePage is so angry that an elderly, disabled couple was
evicted from their Albion home that he plans to change the law so it
never happens again.
The town of Albion foreclosed on the property of Richard and Leonette
Sukeforth, both 80 years old, in December 2015 because of nonpayment of
taxes. The rundown camp at 180 Marden Shore Road on Lovejoy Pond was
sold by the town for $6,500 and the new owner evicted the couple last
week.
“I’m livid about it and I think we have to have laws to protect our
most vulnerable,” LePage said in an interview with the Morning Sentinel.
LePage said he, personally, tried to help the Sukeforths retain their
home and asked Pine Tree Legal to get involved, but the nonprofit
organization that provides free legal help to low-income Mainers
determined the foreclosure was done legally. However, LePage said he
thinks it is immoral that a veteran and his sick, bedridden wife, who
are at the end of their lives, were kicked out of their home and he is
going to fight to ensure the practice is prohibited in the future.
“I’m going to ask for an ombudsman to mediate disputes between
communities and taxpayers, not just elderly,” LePage said Friday. “I
want to change the foreclosure law as it relates to poverty, and one of
the things I want to do is force them (communities) to sell property at
market value and any revenues above taxes and revenue and foreclosure
fees go back to the original owner.”
That the governor would be emotionally moved by the Sukeforth case
and plan legislation in response is not surprising, said Jim Melcher, a
political science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington.
Gov.
Paul LePage, angered by the recent home eviction of an elderly Albion
couple, has vowed to propose legislation aimed at keeping elderly people
in their homes when they face foreclosure. Staff file photo by Andy Molloy
“The governor has always taken a very personal reaction to personal
stories,” Melcher said. “And it certainly fits into the way this
governor has acted. Emotionally, it’s a heart-tugging,
how-can-this-happen kind of thing.”
LePage said most communities, before taking ownership for nonpayment
of taxes, will work with an owner who could get a reverse mortgage, or
the community could abate the taxes. He said he wants people to be able
to stay in their homes and let taxes accrue and when they die, the
property would then go to the community.
“What they did is unbelievable. It’s just not the way it’s done,” he said of the town of Albion.
A lawyer in LePage’s office tried to arrange a meeting with the man
who bought the Sukeforth home, but the new owner refused to do so unless
it occurred in his own lawyer’s office with his lawyer present.
The Sukeforths now are living in a trailer park in Holden with their
daughter, Yvette Ingalls, where a nurse comes every day to tend to
Leonette, who is a retired nurse herself. She is diabetic, weak and
fragile and was in a hospital bed prescribed by her doctor when the
eviction took place, according to the Sukeforth family.
Rachel Sukeforth, their daughter-in-law, who lives across the street
with their son, Rick, said she and her husband drove her in-laws to
Holden in a snowstorm the night they were evicted.
“That deal was very underhanded,” Richard Sukeforth said in a phone
interview from Holden. “I don’t care what anybody says. It weren’t
right. They came down and evicted us when my wife was right in a
hospital bed. We’re both 80 years old, so they done it and got away with
it and they’re happy.”
LePage, who was mayor of Waterville before he became Maine’s
governor, said while it is legal to foreclose on properties, “most
people don’t throw them out for poverty.”
“As mayor of Waterville, whenever we had an issue of poverty, we never threw people out,” he said.
The Sukeforths had lived in the house, which really is a camp, 33
years before they were evicted.
“He’s living in poverty,” LePage said of
Richard Sukeforth. “Now, we’re throwing him out on the street. That’s
just awful.”
Meanwhile, the Sukeforth’s brown-and-gray dog, Pee-wee, and black
cat, Kitty, are temporarily staying with Rick and Rachel Sukeforth, as
the trailer park in Holden does not allow dogs.
Rachel Sukeforth said when she lets the animals out, they go across
the road and sit on the steps of what once was Richard and Leonette’s
house and whimper.
The animals on Wednesday were wandering around that house in the
snow. The dog, a 10-year-old Jack Russell terrier, shivered on the
ice-covered dirt road.
MAKING PAYMENT
Even as Maine’s governor is voicing outrage over the Sukeforth
eviction, town officials said the process to get to that point was legal
and that Richard Sukeforth had many chances to prevent it.
Albion Selectwoman Beverly Bradstreet said he owed about $4,000 in
taxes on the property, which was taxed at a little under $800 a year,
not including interest and lien fees.
The town gave Richard Sukeforth, a National Guard and Marine veteran,
every opportunity to pay and even paid his taxes for two years, in 2011
and 2012, out of a special fund the town maintains to help people in
need, according to Bradstreet.
Pee-wee
the dog, owned by Richard and Leonette Sukeforth, remains
vigilant
Wednesday outside their former home on Lovejoy Pond in Albion.
The
Sukeforths, who are staying in Holden with their daughter, were
evicted
from their home recently after the town foreclosed on it for
nonpayment
of taxes and then sold it by auction. Pee-wee is living
temporarily with
the Sukeforths’ son and daughter-in-law across the road
from their
former home because dogs are not allowed in the trailer park in
Holden
where they are staying. Staff photo by David Leaming
“It’s three years before we foreclose, and we paid his taxes, like
two different years to avoid foreclosure; but then he just let it go,”
Bradstreet said. “He knew that we were going to do it. He would come in
the Town Office, but he did not pay. I don’t know why. He just waited
until it was too late. We foreclosed last December, 2015. We gave him
six months to still pay it off and he made no effort to pay it off. He
didn’t try, and there were other people in town that could use some
help, too.”
She said that, had Sukeforth paid his taxes before December 2015, he would have had to pay only one year’s taxes.
But Rachel Sukeforth said the family did not know her father-in-law,
who is in an early stage of dementia, did not pay his taxes; in fact,
she would ask him if he had gone to the Town Office to pay and he said
he had. It was only when the family saw a notice in the newspaper last
summer that there was to be an auction on the property that they learned
of the foreclosure, she said.
“As soon as we found this out, we called the Town Office,” she said.
“My husband and siblings and our neighbor all tried to pay the taxes up
to date, and they refused payment. This wasn’t sitting well with any one
of us. Every town has the right to refuse payment, but can also accept
the payment as well. When we tried to pay selectmen, they said when an
auction is posted in the newspaper, they can no longer accept payment,
but that wasn’t true.”
LePage said the town at that point could have accepted the payment.
“It’s never too late until the deed transfers, and the deed had not
transferred,” he said.
Rachel Sukeforth said the family is trying to have her in-laws’ dog
designated as a service dog so they can have it at the Holden trailer
park. LePage is concerned about the dog, he said.
“If they need a place for the dog to go, I’ll take him,” he said.
He said he is working to help find the Sukeforths a place to live, such as an assisted-living facility.
Richard Sukeforth said he and his wife receive $1,252 a month in
Social Security payments. He worked in construction during the summer
for many years, operated a snowplow for the Maine Turnpike in winter and
later worked for Bath Iron Works until he was injured when he fell off a
crane boom in 1982, he said.
He maintained Marden Shore Road for the road association there for 33
years, for no pay, until the association voted in 2015 to pay him $500 a
year. He said he misses his home, his dog and his cat and thinks it was
wrong for the town to foreclose on his property and sell it.
His daughter, Ingalls, said her parents were told Dec. 29 that if
they were not out of the house by midnight, the doors would be locked
and a deputy sheriff called. She said they are upset about losing their
home.
“They’re beside themselves, as old as they are,” Ingalls said.
“Everything they’ve gone through in their whole lives, and they get
thrown out like this.”
FORECLOSURE AND EVICTION
LePage learned of the Albion situation when MaryAnn Sawlan-Neiman,
who with her husband, Jim, owns a home three properties away from the
Sukeforth’s home, contacted the governor’s office for help.
Sawlan-Neiman, who lives most of the year in Dracut, Massachusetts, but
is also Marden Shore Road Association commissioner, said she did
everything she could to help keep the Sukeforths in their home prior to
calling LePage’s office.
“It’s just devastating for them,” she said of the couple. “He’s just like a lost man now.”
She said she met the Sukeforths many years ago, as he maintained the
private, dirt road for 33 years.
The dead-end road off China Road is
six-tenths of a mile long.
“Every day, he would come down, stay a couple of hours, and I’d go to
his house. We just became really good friends. Another neighbor told me
in July they were going to foreclose for taxes. I went to the town hall
and I said, ‘What does he owe? I’ll pay for it right now.'”
She said the town refused payment. She said she told town officials
she recognized Sukeforth had dementia because her own mother had had
Alzheimer’s disease.
“He is a … vet. There’s just so many reasons this shouldn’t be able to happen,” she said.
After she and Sukeforth met Sept. 7 with LePage, she hoped there
would be a positive resolution in the case, but that did not happen.
“I truly believe the governor did everything he could to help,”
Sawlan-Neiman said. “He’s actually called me to come testify when the
bill is ready. I’m very nervous about doing that because I don’t speak
well in front of people, but I don’t want this to happen to anyone
else.”
Sawlan-Neiman bid $6,000 for the Sukeforth property in August at the
sealed-bid auction. But Jason Marks, an electrician whose father,
Winston, owns the property next to Richard and Leonette Sukeforth’s
camp, bid $6,500; and as the higher bidder, he was awarded the property.
Jason Marks also owns a home on Marden Shore Road and does electrical
work for the town of Albion. Sawlan-Neiman said the relationship
between Marks and town officials, who are friendly, raises red flags.
“I can’t help but think that this was a setup so Jason could buy the property,” she said.
Both Marks and Bradstreet said that is not true. Bradstreet said she
didn’t even know that Jason Marks was bidding on the Sukeforth property.
Marks’ father actually brought the envelope with the sealed bid into
the Town Office, she said, so town officials thought he was the one
seeking to purchase it, not Jason. And while the town does hire Jason
Marks to do electrical work, it is because he is the only local
electrician available and lives in the town, according to Bradstreet,
who said town officials actually were anticipating that Sawlan-Neiman
would submit the higher bid so Sukeforth could keep the property.
“There was absolutely nothing underhanded,” Bradstreet said. “We were hoping she would get it.”
Jason Marks said that after he became owner of the Sukeforth
property, he could have evicted the Sukeforths by September; but
instead, he allowed the couple to stay in the house if they would pay
rent.
“He (Richard Sukeforth) refused to pay any rent, and he actually
refused to let me clean up the property because my insurance company was
giving me a hard time about that,” Marks said.
GOVERNOR’S INVOLVEMENT
Marks said he got a call from a lawyer in the governor’s office last
year asking to meet with him and LePage, but Marks did not want to meet
with them unless he could have his own lawyer at such a meeting.
“I felt uncomfortable with the governor’s lawyer included in this
when it originally happened because he mentioned he was going to look
into future legislation and the well-being of Richard Sukeforth,” Marks
said. “I was wanting to meet with the governor at my lawyer’s office
because he was going to have his legal counsel there and said they were
looking out for the well-being of Richard Sukeforth; but the deputy
legal counsel told me the governor probably would refuse, and I never
heard back from them.”
But LePage said he did not ask for lawyers to be present — that he
wanted to meet with Marks, one-on-one, to ask if he would let the
Sukeforths stay in the house for the rest of their lives.
“I never meet with lawyers,” LePage said Friday. “When I ask for a
meeting, it’s me, alone. When I go after corruption, I go after
corruption head-on. I don’t need any help.”
Marks said he actually tried to find help for the Sukeforths and
called Sen. Susan Collins’ office, which was working to find out what
could be done to help the couple. He said he spoke with a woman at that
office. “She told me that Richard fell through every crack there is, and
my comment to her was it’s too bad that he did work his whole life
because if he didn’t work, there would have been benefits for him.”
A message left at Collins’ Augusta office was not returned immediately Friday.
LePage said there are programs to help elderly people, but he did not
learn about the situation until after the foreclosure and transfer of
the property.
Marks said he felt as if he was being made to feel like a bad person
for evicting the Sukeforths and felt pressured by the governor.
“It’s not that I bought the property with the intentions of kicking
him out and being done with it,” he said. “I tried doing something along
the way to help.”
Both Bradstreet and Marks question how a law would work that would
prohibit municipalities from foreclosing on and evicting elderly people
who do not pay taxes. Bradstreet wonders if it would place a financial
burden on towns. Marks said at some point, a town must foreclose.
“It’s too bad it’s an elderly person, but someone not paying their
taxes makes it harder for everyone who does,” Marks said. “Everyone else
pays their fair share.”
Marks also wondered why LePage is so invested in the Sukeforth case
and said he welcomes LePage to come and look at the camp the Sukeforths
lived in, to see the conditions inside, and he would talk to the
governor about it.
“It’s not a place I’d want my family to live,” Marks said.
Richard
and Leonette Sukeforth, both 80 years old, live in Holden with
their
daughter Yvette Ingalls after having been evicted from their home
in
Albion for nonpayment of real estate taxes. Staff photo by David Leaming
It’s not uncommon for governors or legislators to propose bills based
on a single case — usually compelling stories involving matters such as
child disappearances or deaths, according to Melcher, the UMF political
science professor. Those anecdotes, though, are typically widely known
and reported in the media before legislation is brought forward, whereas
the Albion case has been known recently only to the people involved,
town officials and LePage’s office.
Melcher cautioned against legislation based solely on a single incident.
“One case leading to action is not unusual; but for policy, we should
wonder if this is a sign of a bigger problem, or are we reacting to
just one thing?” Melcher said. “Sometimes when people get emotional,
they make decisions they regret later. It’s good to start an examination
based on a single case, but you don’t want to make policy on just one
case without looking at all the implications.”
LePage, though, said he knows of other cases like the Sukeforths’.
Meanwhile, Rachel and Rick Sukeforth have been packing up his
parents’ belongings and moving them out, little by little, and Marks has
been good about them allowing them to do that, Rachel said.
She said she hopes LePage’s efforts to get a bill passed are successful.
“It’s so important to be a voice for the elderly,” she said, “because
people just tend to throw them aside like they’re nothing because of
their age.”
Full Article & Source:
Elderly couple’s eviction from Albion home draws LePage’s ire
