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A Brooklyn man is at risk of losing the home he spent more than two decades paying off—not to a bank or a mortgage lender, but to a group of investors after the city sold off his $20,000 debt from an unpaid water bill that began at just $600.
Filmore Brown’s ordeal shows how a minor oversight can spiral into financial catastrophe under New York City’s lien system. Under the system, overdue property and water bills can be packaged and sold to private trusts (or groups of investors). Once in their hands, fees and interest pile up, and a small debt can balloon into a sum so large that it triggers a foreclosure.
“It was stolen from me,” Brown said of his home in an interview with ABC 7.
His case comes as foreclosure activity is rising nationwide. In May, about 1 in every 4,000 homes received a foreclosure filing, a 14% jump year over year, according to data from ATTOM.
While many might think that only mortgage-holders are at risk of these proceedings, Brown’s story underscores a sobering reality: Even homeowners who have fully paid off their mortgages are not immune from losing everything.
What happened to Filmore Brown
Public records show that Brown bought his three-family home in Brooklyn in 1996 for $240,000. By 2019, after more than two decades of work, he’d paid off the mortgage in full. Today, similar homes in his neighborhood list for $800,000 to $1 million, according to Realtor.com® data.
But in the same year he made his final mortgage payment, a $600 water bill slipped past him. That bill began racking up interest at a staggering 18% per day, his attorney, Alice Nicholson, told PIX11. The debt ballooned to $5,000. City fees and penalties added another $15,000, pushing the total to $20,000.
That’s when the city placed a lien on his home and sold the debt to a private trust—a move that set the stage for foreclosure.
Part of the problem, Nicholson argues, is the city’s fragmented billing system. Once the overdue bill was transferred into the lien trust, it disappeared from Brown’s regular statements. Even as he kept paying thousands of dollars in current taxes and water charges, there was no notice on his account flagging the older debt.
The Department of Finance and the lien trust maintain that Brown was properly notified. Court records show someone at his address was served foreclosure papers in late 2020. But Brown, who lives on the top floor while renting out the two units below, insists he never saw them.
“I don’t want anybody to go through what I’m going through,” said Brown. “I cannot eat, I cannot drink, and I cannot sleep.”
How New York City’s lien sale system works
“All overdue water and sewer charges are considered a lien against your property. New York City has the authority to sell this lien to a third party, or lienholder, when the charges have been delinquent for more than a year,” explains New York City’s 311 website.
The same is true for property tax bills, though they are sold after three years of delinquency.
Once the debt is delinquent for these set periods, the city can bundle it into a lien and sell that lien to a private trust. The trust pays the city about 70 cents on the dollar, then contracts with debt collectors to recover the balance, and often with the addition of steep interest charges and other fees that can make the debt swell far beyond its original value.
The city stresses that selling a lien isn’t the same as selling a home. But in practice, lienholders gain the power to push for foreclosure if debts remain unpaid. That means relatively small balances can snowball into debts big enough to cost a homeowner their property.
The reach of the program is considerable. In 2025, more than 18,000 properties were at risk of lien sale, owing an average of just over $30,000, according to Bloomberg Tax. Nearly 40% of those were tied to unpaid water bills, like Brown’s. Roughly two-thirds were located in Brooklyn and Queens, and about 70% were in majority nonwhite neighborhoods.
Critics say these numbers point to an inherently predatory system.
But city officials insist newly passed reforms are working. After the lien sale program resumed in 2025 following a COVID-19 pandemic pause, the Department of Finance launched a $2 million outreach campaign, complete with robocalls and door-to-door visits to notify those at risk of their options—like an “easy exit” deferral or hardship plan tied to income.
Still, critics argue the fixes don’t go far enough. The lien sale remains six times more likely to affect a majority-Black neighborhood than a majority-white one. And as Brown’s case shows, even homeowners who believe they’re current on their bills can find themselves caught in the system’s gaps with devastating consequences.
One missed bill, one lost home, and a system in need of change
Brown’s case is a warning about the fragility of homeownership in New York. For families who worked decades to build equity, the threat of foreclosure doesn’t always come from a mortgage lender—it can also come from a municipal billing system.
As New York City revives its lien sale program, the question isn’t only how to help homeowners like Brown avoid foreclosure, but whether the system itself needs to be reimagined. Other cities like San Francisco and Baltimore have shifted to more forgiving models that prioritize stability and housing security.
Until New York follows suit, thousands of households—many in neighborhoods already under economic strain—remain one missed bill away from losing everything.