Brooklyn politicians push back after overdue water bill snag leaves Black homeowner foreclosed

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A Brooklyn homeowner has had his fully paid-off home sold out from under him and his tenants because of a past due $5,000 water bill that landed his property on New York City’s property and water tax lien sale. Now, he and elected officials are fighting back.

“This is my life. I don’t have nothing [sic] else,” said Filmore Brown, a 62-year-old Jamaican immigrant and a small business owner. He purchased his three-story building in East Flatbush in 1996 and has since paid off his mortgage in full. He claims that he only found out about a month ago that he had a questionable past due water bill from 2019 that had led to the foreclosure and auctioning of his home without his knowledge. 

At a press conference held in front of his building on August 15, the community and a number of politicians came together in an attempt to bring public awareness to Brown’s case and demand systemic change.

“What the hell is going on? What is frustrating me is that every single avenue that you can think of seems to be designed to steal the wealth and homes from Black, Brown, and immigrant New Yorkers. With a particular concentration on Black homeowners. That’s just a fact,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams passionately at the conference. 


Ariama C. Long photos

The city’s tax lien sale is a three-decade-old practice. When a property is on the tax lien sale list, it means the owner owes outstanding property taxes, has building code violations, or has water, sewer, and other property-related charges. The city can then sell the debt to an authorized buyer who has the right to collect what’s owed, opening up homeowners to predatory debt collectors. Commercial properties can be on the list for one year, while a residential property can get up to three years before the city moves forward with foreclosure. 

The city’s Department of Finance (DOF) is supposed to send homeowners warning notices at least 90, 60, 30, and 10 days respectively before the sale list is posted. Many homeowners say they end up on the list without being properly informed by the DOF or Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that they owe money to the city, especially when it comes to unpaid water bills. The 2025 lien sale was held on June 3. 

Brown maintains he wasn’t informed of what was happening until the supposed new owners breached the house in the middle of the night, drilled out the locks, and installed surveillance cameras while his family and tenants were awoken from their sleep. Frustrated, Brown said that if he had known about the bill he would have certainly paid it. 

“I don’t want this to happen to other people. I don’t want them to feel like how I feel,” said Brown. 

Housing advocates have long viewed the tax lien sale as a harbinger of foreclosure for many Black and Brown homeowners, and have forcefully called for its abolition. 

“What’s also a fact, if this was not happening to Black, Brown, immigrant, homeowners in New York, we wouldn’t have a damn problem in the first place. Everything would be fixed,” continued Williams. “And you allow someone to come in like a thief in a night to try to break into his home.
Something is wrong.”

Alice Nicholson, Brown’s attorney, said that a foreclosure case was initiated in 2020 during the pandemic shutdowns, when courts were operating under severe restrictions. The court granted a default judgment in 2021 and a final judgment in 2023 without Brown’s knowledge. This paved the way for the property to be sold without a formal eviction proceeding at a foreclosure auction in 2024. In late July 2025, the court denied a stay request to pause the foreclosure enforcement. 

“This was one bill that fell through the cracks,” said Alice Nicholson, Esq., Brown’s attorney. “After this is sold to the New York City tax lien trust, there’s no connection of that bill to the other bills in the DOF system. So the homeowner does not know that there’s another bill out there that’s accumulating interest at 18% a day.” 

At present, Brown and his tenants are still physically in the home and have not been put out yet. The new owners are demanding they start paying rent. She said the legal team is focused on the issue of lien notices Brown said he didn’t receive, a foreclosure notice he wasn’t served, and that normally only a marshall can come to a property and change locks –– not the new owners. 

“This is a responsible man. He paid off his mortgage, he pays his bills,” said Nicholson. “There’s something wrong with the system that’s not notifying the people in the situation.” 

A coalition of Brooklyn elected officials were at the press conference demanding answers and immediate intervention on Brown’s behalf, including Williams, Assemblymember Monique Chandler-Waterman, Councilmember Chris Banks, and Senator Roxanne J. Persaud.

“This is a personal matter. Our Black and Brown communities have carried the cities on their backs,” said Chandler-Waterman. “They have endured red lining, housing discrimination, disinvestment, and now gentrification and forced displacement. Enough is enough.”

Chandler-Waterman said she’s partnered with community organizations like Brooklyn Level Up

and Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of Brooklyn, to go door-to-door canvassing and alerting homeowners about the lien sales and offering housing resources. She is demanding a stop to the lien sale process to allow for reforms, an immediate public hearing and investigation into Brown’s case, and is planning legislation at the state level to remove water bills from the tax lien sale process.

“We will not rest until we get to the bottom of this and hold every culpable party accountable. Reverse this illegal foreclosure, and ensure that Mr. Brown and his family have their home returned and it never, never happens again,” said Banks. “This is a systematic failure and seems to be a systemic attack on creating generational wealth in our communities.”

Banks is calling for a moratorium on the tax lien sale, the removal of the water bills as a tax lien sale liability, and intends to introduce city legislation to improve the notification procedure.