cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/54239937
During the Great Depression, when banks foreclosed on farms, neighbors often showed up at the auctions together.
They’d bid only a few cents, and return the land to the family that lost it. Sometimes a noose hung nearby as a warning to outsiders not to profit from someone else’s ruin.
It was rough, but it worked, communities protected each other when the system wouldn’t.
If a collapse like that happened today, do you think people would still stand together or has that kind of solidarity disappeared? Could it happen again?


Most of the tax delinquent auctions I’ve glanced at have a minimum bid of the entire assessed value of the property, which usually that assessment predates the tax delinquency so they end up being more expensive at auction than in normal property sales
I’ve not learned where to find foreclosure auctions listed yet but I would expect those to be similar