Welfare State Crack-Up in Illinois. Oak Park woman faced tax hit on home over budget standoff.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Illinois’ budget standoff hit home for Rachel Grainer in a way she never would have anticipated.

The 79-year-old Oak Park woman, just home from a hospital stay, was shocked to receive a letter from her mortgage company in March demanding that Grainer immediately pay her overdue real estate taxes and threatening to force her to open an escrow account for future taxes.


Grainer thought there must be some mistake. That’s because she is among hundreds of Chicago area homeowners who participate in the state’s Senior Citizens Real Estate Tax Deferral Program.

Under the program, the state pays up to $5,000 a year toward the property taxes of participating homeowners 65 and older — in effect lending them the money at 6 percent interest.

The state gets repaid after the homeowner dies or the property is sold.

The purpose of the program, which is limited to seniors with an annual household income of less than $55,000, is to keep older residents from being forced out of their homes by rising property taxes.

But Grainer was among 290 Cook County residents whose taxes totaling $943,663 went unpaid last year because the state did not remit the money to the county as promised.

The God that eventually fails.