This is a joint project of Injustice Watch and the Investigative Project on Race and Equity. Read part one in this series here.
Several months into her term as the mayor of south suburban Ford Heights in 2017, Annie Coulter learned about alarming irregularities in the village’s real estate records.
Village officials discovered that her predecessor, Charles Griffin, had arranged to give away 17 village-owned houses: At least four of them were transferred to friends and family members, while another six went to his political supporters, school board members and fellow village officials, including Freddie Wilson, the village’s current mayor, court records show.
The village had seized the 17 houses through a Cook County revitalization program that allows municipalities like Ford Heights to take over tax-delinquent properties in their communities. At the time of the 2017 transfers, the houses were collectively worth about $410,000, according to Cook County Assessor’s Office data.
During his second term as mayor, Griffin had four additional houses transferred for free, according to a review of property records by the Investigative Project on Race and Equity.
Critics say what Griffin did in Ford Heights was a clear misuse of the county’s revitalization program, which is aimed at getting vacant and blighted properties back on the tax rolls and returning them to productive use.
“You would hope you wouldn’t have to remind your representatives not to use a public program as their personal piggy bank, but apparently it needs to be made clear,” said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.
But an investigation by the Investigative Project in partnership with Injustice Watch found that the county doesn’t have a robust enough system of regulation and oversight to prevent officials like Griffin from using the revitalization program for personal and political gain.
In fact, the county has no regulation explicitly prohibiting what Griffin did in Ford Heights, and neither the Cook County Board of Commissioners nor the Cook County Bureau of Economic Development — which oversees and helps administer the revitalization program, respectively — has moved to prevent village officials from giving away more houses.
In a statement, Griffin acknowledged that friends and family members were among the recipients of the houses. “The Village of Ford Heights has a population of less than 2,000. I am a relative or friend to 75% of the population,” he said. “However, I did not play a role in anyone receiving” the houses.
Wilson did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The investigation by the Investigative Project and Injustice Watch also found that the county’s lax regulation and oversight of the revitalization program has led to a number of other problems. For instance, even though the program is aimed at addressing community blight, it can end up exacerbating it: Seized properties sometimes fall into disrepair and tax delinquency, as municipalities fail to maintain them — or hand them off to new owners who neglect them.
A case in point: A pale-yellow ranch-style house in Ford Heights that was given away in 2017 is now in disrepair. Its windows are boarded up with plywood, overgrown weeds are spilling into a neighbor’s front lawn, and the two-track driveway is cracked and buckling. According to tax records, the owner hasn’t paid property taxes since receiving the house.
Since 2016, municipalities have used the revitalization program to seize more than 600 tax-delinquent properties — most of which were in predominantly Black communities in the south suburbs, such as Calumet City, Calumet Park and Riverdale, according to an analysis of tax and property records by the Investigative Project.
The investigation found that when municipalities seize properties, the county has allowed them to pocket their full value, including the amount of any equity that homeowners had built up in excess of their tax debt.
In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar practice, ruling that a Minnesota county couldn’t take more than what it was owed when collecting delinquent property taxes.
In December, a federal judge in Chicago also ruled that the way Cook County similarly allows private investors to seize tax-delinquent properties without fairly compensating owners was unconstitutional.
In a statement, Frank Aguilar, the chairman of the Board of Commissioners’ subcommittee on tax delinquency, told the Investigative Project that the county temporarily suspended the revitalization program following the Supreme Court’s ruling, so that it can work with stakeholders “to ensure compliance with federal and state law.”
But the suspension didn’t immediately stop municipalities from seizing properties; they still could move forward with the foreclosure process as long as they first secured the county’s approval before December 2023.
Municipalities can also get around the temporary suspension by using a different county initiative, which allows them to seize properties through partnership with the Cook County Land Bank Authority, an agency created in 2013 to deal with vacant, tax-delinquent properties throughout the county.
Since 2013, municipalities have seized 573 properties through partnerships with the land bank, according to the agency. Sixty seizures have taken place since 2023, when the revitalization program was suspended, an analysis of property records by the Investigative Project shows.
Critics say the county needs to tighten its regulation and oversight of the way municipalities are allowed to seize tax-delinquent properties.
“The county has an obligation to ensure that any public resources it controls are used for legitimate public purposes,” said David Merriman, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor of public administration who has studied Cook County’s property tax system.
Maria Phelan, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Economic Development, told the Investigative Project that the responsibility rests on municipalities to properly take care of seized properties, noting that the revitalization program “does not regulate how a [municipality] manages or distributes property acquired through” the program.
“State law and county ordinance provide the [revitalization] program as an economic tool to assist communities,” Phelan said in a statement. Municipalities “should engage in efforts to develop tax-delinquent properties for the betterment of the community.”
Ellis Franklin, Ford Heights’ current economic development director, said he wasn’t aware that Griffin had the houses transferred to friends and family members until contacted by the Investigative Project. He said the village is working to take better care of the houses still in its possession; it plans to rehab and make them available as affordable housing for its residents. “Going forward, we’re going to be very careful,” he said.
Griffin said that all recipients of the houses went through an application process, and that village trustees approved the property transfers.
But the village’s clerk, Nyree Ford, told the Investigative Project that her office doesn’t have any official records prior to June 2017, so she is unable to verify whether the transfers of the 17 houses were approved. Board meeting minutes from 2022 to 2024 published on the village’s website have no record of village trustees approving the transfers of the four houses during Griffin’s second term.
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In June 2013, Ford Heights officials requested the use of the county’s revitalization program to seize 29 vacant houses. The village wanted control of the houses to “improve the vitality and stability of the residential neighborhoods,” according to a resolution passed by then-Mayor Griffin and village trustees. The Board of Commissioners approved the village’s request in November 2013, records show.
The revitalization program’s only requirement was that village officials submit annual reports on the status of each house for at least five years. But the Investigative Project found that they failed to submit the required reports.
Nonetheless, village officials were still able to complete the seizures of all 29 houses in 2016. By using the revitalization program, they were also able to get delinquent property taxes cleared on each house.
After losing his reelection bid in April 2017, Griffin allegedly veered from the village’s original plan for the houses and arranged to give away 17 of them before leaving the office, court records show.
A few years later, Griffin arranged to give away four additional houses — after Coulter left the office and Griffin was reelected to a second term as mayor in 2021.
Two recipients of the houses have since gone on to sell the properties — for $95,000 and $20,000. A third recipient redeveloped the house and sold it for $152,000. Most of the other recipients have held on to their houses, whose values have since appreciated by about 17%.
One recipient — a longtime friend of Griffin’s — was also able to settle a lawsuit by using the property as collateral for a $50,000 debt, court and property records show.
Griffin’s actions first came to light in 2017 — not through the county’s diligence in monitoring the revitalization program but through Coulter, who learned what Griffin had done and reported it to law enforcement authorities.
County prosecutors eventually indicted Griffin on felony theft and official misconduct charges — though not for the free house transfers, but for something else Coulter reported: Griffin had also embezzled tens of thousands of dollars in village funds.
It’s unclear whether prosecutors determined that a case against Griffin for the free house transfers wasn’t strong enough, or that his actions did not violate any law. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to comment for this story.
Griffin, who was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to four years in prison and fined $50,000, has maintained his innocence and appealed his conviction in February. His attorney Phillip Turner told the Investigative Project: “Everything that Charles Griffin did regarding this issue was lawful.”
Phelan, the Bureau of Economic Development spokesperson, acknowledged that the agency hadn’t been aware of what Griffin did in Ford Heights before Coulter reported it. But she said the agency knew about the village’s failure to submit the required reports and sent reminders to both Griffin and Coulter. “We encourage [municipalities] to complete their reporting requirements,” she said.
Under county regulations, the Board of Commissioners had the power to bring “appropriate legal action” and bar Ford Heights from using the revitalization program for failing to follow its rules. But there are no records of the board bringing legal action against Ford Heights.
The board also kept allowing Ford Heights to use the revitalization program in subsequent years. According to Bureau of Economic Development data, the village was able to use the program on 322 properties from 2019 to 2023. (A review of court and property records shows that the village ultimately didn’t file for foreclosure and didn’t seize any of the properties.)
Kaplan of Reform for Illinois said what happened in Ford Heights highlights a need for the county to establish stricter rules on what municipalities can do with seized properties; conflict-of-interest disclosure requirements; and oversight by an independent body.
“The rules need to be revisited to prevent anything like this from happening again,” Kaplan said.
Raff Donelson, professor of law and philosophy at Illinois Institute of Technology, said the county should also consider imposing criminal penalties if municipalities fail to follow the rules.
“Seized properties should be put up for public auction, or there should be some other suitably public way that everyone has a fair chance of getting at the property,” Donelson said. “If that doesn’t happen, that really ought to be a crime.”
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Some local and county officials say there are many upsides to allowing municipalities to seize tax-delinquent properties — whether it’s through the county’s revitalization program or through partnership with the land bank. They note that the efforts have helped kick-start a wide array of developments and infrastructure projects in the south and west suburbs: an Amazon warehouse in Markham; new parks, walking trails and parking lots for municipal buildings; and much-needed flood-control infrastructure.
What municipalities are particularly well-positioned to do is to take vacant properties that aren’t attracting private investment and return them to productive use, said Bart Smith, counsel for River Grove, a west suburban village of about 10,000 residents.
“It’s a great program to allow municipalities to not only get [the property] back in action and serving the community in some manner, but also [to get] the property back on your taxing base,” Smith said.
River Grove has used the revitalization program in recent years to develop long-abandoned properties, turning one vacant parcel near the village hall into a municipal parking lot and demolishing an abandoned restaurant and selling the land for mixed-use development, Smith said.
But the county’s efforts haven’t always worked as intended and sometimes led to the opposite effect: displacing homeowners and creating blight in their wake.
Critics blame the county for not putting any safeguards in place — such as prohibiting municipalities from seizing owner-occupied houses or requiring them to maintain seized properties.
A split-level house on Spaulding Avenue in south suburban Markham illustrates what can happen without such safeguards: It has stood empty since city officials seized it in 2023 and kicked out the owner over delinquent property taxes.
Zella Croff, who had lived in the house for almost 20 years, owed nearly $60,000 by the time she was forced to move out, tax records show. Croff, now 73, told the Investigative Project that she fell behind on her taxes inadvertently: When she bought the house, she said, she wasn’t aware that it straddled two parcels and therefore generated two property tax bills, or that her mortgage company had set up her payments to cover only one of them.
A delinquent tax notice arrived in the mail several years later, starting what would become a yearslong battle for Croff to catch up on her taxes and combine the two parcels into one, she said.
In 2021, Markham received the tax lien on the house — known as “tax certificate” — from the land bank and then seized the property, which was worth $240,000, two years later when Croff couldn’t pay off her tax debt. (The city followed the same process to seize 43 other houses in 2023, according to emails obtained through public records requests.)
Markham officials appear to have done little to maintain the house since then. In December, the front door of the house had a municipal code violation sticker from May, which warned that the city would take action against the property owner — the city itself, in this case — for overgrown grass and weeds.
Croff, who moved into senior housing in a nearby suburb, questions why Markham has left the house sitting unoccupied and unprotected.
“If they wanted it so badly, why isn’t it boarded up? Why isn’t it on a list to be sold?” Croff asked. “I felt very depressed after seeing the home and looking over the past and at how much energy I put into it to keep the home for myself.”
Markham officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
An analysis of homeowner tax exemption records by the Investigative Project shows that municipalities have seized at least 10 other owner-occupied houses since 2018 through partnerships with the land bank or after receiving tax certificates from the agency.
Kiera Ellis, a spokesperson for the land bank, said the decision to kick out Croff was made by Markham officials.
“The tax certificate transfer did not obligate Markham to take the property to deed or to evict the homeowner,” Ellis said in an email.
Bob Palmer, policy director of Housing Action Illinois, a statewide coalition of affordable housing advocates, said homeowners shouldn’t be displaced for delinquent property taxes, and that’s why he’s been advocating for statewide reform to “orient the whole system for dealing with delinquent property taxes to be much more focused on preserving homeownership.”
“No homeowner would ever find themselves in the situation where they could lose their home,” Palmer said.
Instead of displacing them, the county should provide relief to homeowners — such as offering payment plans that allow them to pay off their tax debt in installments over a longer period than the current time limit of three years, Palmer said.
Homeowners who fall behind on property taxes and need help catching up have few resources to turn to. Last year, for instance, the Board of Commissioners approved a first-of-its-kind relief program that offers one-time payments of $1,000 to about 14,000 homeowners who have experienced large increases in their tax bill. But even if Croff had qualified for a payment, it would have been too late — and nowhere enough.
Meanwhile, leaders in the south suburbs say they’re desperate for a solution that lets them deal with tax-delinquent properties in their communities while also making sure that homeowners are properly protected and compensated.
Kristi DeLaurentiis, executive director of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, said many communities are plagued by what she calls “zombie” properties: “There’s certainly no one living there. They’re falling into disrepair. They’re nuisance properties.”
With the revitalization program suspended, DeLaurentiis said, few resources are available to manage the problem.
“How do we have some ability to intervene and make sure that we can stabilize … so that you know they’re safe and not an impediment within the community or not a liability to the community?” DeLaurentiis said. “I haven’t heard of any definitive answer yet.”
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