Miss an $800 property tax bill in Kentucky and a company can take your $200,000 house, legal aid lawyer says

Owe the county $800, lose a house worth $200,000. That's the math an Eastern Kentucky legal aid attorney says he sees every week: companies — many from out of state — buy unpaid property tax bills at the county's mandatory annual sale, then demand seven or eight thousand dollars from the homeowner to release the lien.

If the owner can't pay, he says, the company forecloses, shows up at the courthouse-steps sale, wins the house for a few thousand dollars, and lists it on Zillow at market rate. Many of his clients, often seniors on fixed incomes, say the foreclosure suit was the first of a dozen-plus required notices they ever actually received.

He says one Cincinnati law firm filed 60 tax-lien foreclosures in a single county this year, only 14 of those homeowners reached his desk, and there's no right to a free lawyer in these cases — he's the only attorney in his seven-county area taking them. His ask: change the state law, and donate to your local legal aid.