In the rural town of Butler, Missouri—birthplace of author and libertarian thinker Robert A. Heinlein—we found a small Christian bookstore with a big mission. Not only does The Carpenter’s Cup sell books, gifts, décor, and have a full hot and cold beverage menu ranging from coffee to fruit smoothies: they are also a major hub of charity for Bates County.
I spoke with Becky, one of the founders and owners. When I asked her who got the bookstore started, she said: “God did.” Becky and her sister Phyllis were both working as registered nurses when Becky felt inspired that someone should start a Christian bookstore in town. At the end of 2015, Becky quit her job as a nurse and took the leap of faith to get her bookstore dream started and christened it The Carpenter’s Cup. Her sister Phyllis and their 90 year-old mother also work in the store.
Almost immediately, people in need began flocking to the new Christian bookstore for help with food, bills, clothing, and other necessities. Becky says she thinks they thought it was a church at first. The local Ministry Alliance of pastors from various churches asked if they could hand out utility vouchers at her bookstore. She only agreed after they promised that background checks at the police station would no longer be required for the vouchers, and there would be no policing of the morality of the needy people as well. “That’s none of my business,” she said, referring to Christ’s ministry feeding the hungry and helping people no matter how righteous or wicked other people thought they were.
There is great need in the Bates County area. But as Becky says, “a lot of people want to help, they just don’t know how.” The Carpenter’s Cup now facilitates all kinds of charitable programs. They began Project Hand Up, a 501c3 dedicated to assisting the needy. They have a Blessings Box outside their door—a cabinet someone built and donated for people to put shelf-stable food into and take as needed. Inside, they have fridge space for perishable food donations. In this rural setting, many people bring produce straight from their gardens and eggs from their own backyard chickens and ducks. Even the local Walmart sends food donations monthly, and if anything is expired, the food is still usable to people who keep chickens or other livestock.
I asked Becky how they made it through the Covid lockdowns. She said people volunteered to pay their rent and utility bills while they had to close. And even though they were closed, people still brought in food and entire prepared meals for the needy. People in need would come pick up the food, or if they couldn’t, a volunteer would deliver it. In the summer of 2020, they began a lunch program for school-aged children. This soon expanded to anyone who needed lunch. The food is provided by individual donors as well as the local Sonic and McDonald’s, and then served at the local park and the town square. Becky estimates they served 4000 lunches that summer.
The Carpenter’s Cup also provides backpacks with school supplies for families in need, and when they can get enough donations, new shoes and socks for school-aged children. For Thanksgiving, they fill laundry baskets with a turkey and all the ingredients for a delicious Thanksgiving feast for people to pick up. Last Thanksgiving (2022), they provided 500 meals. In the winter, they collect coats and warm gear for the homeless, working in conjunction with Jeff Moore, whom VIA donors assisted with this effort last winter (February 2023). In the summer, they collect fans and small air conditioning units to distribute.
In this blazing Missouri summer, The Carpenter’s Cup greets you with a handwritten sign on its door stating: “FREE ICE WATER.” The bookstore has had people sleep on its store floor before. Becky laments that there is not a homeless shelter in Bates County—it’s a sore need that has yet to be filled with numerous homeless camps in the area. But they do what they can, and the impact is widely felt. It’s sad to see so much need, but heartening to see so many people who want to help and have done so much without government coercion.
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed to our Winter Care Packages charity campaign! Thanks to you, we were able to raise enough money to purchase hundreds of hygiene kits, warm socks, blankets, and winter coats for homeless and needy people.
This year, we distributed through First Fruits, an organization founded and staffed by Missourian Jeffrey Moore. Moore started his efforts by purchasing extra food and taking it to people in shopping bags. As the years passed, he formed partnerships with local businesses, eventually forming into a 501C3 nonprofit.
VIA Volunteer Jeff loading donated items into Moore's van. Moore declined to appear in photographs, saying "It's not about me."
Although a 501C3 sounds fancy, it’s still just Moore giving out donated items to people. He estimates that there are >3,000 homeless people living between Kansas City and Butler, MO. Now, thanks to your generous donations, he has more coats, socks, gloves, and more to give out to people suffering in the cold Missouri winter. More people helped…because of your voluntary giving! Here’s hoping that next year’s Winter Care Package drive will let us help even more people.
Alan DiPietro is an alpaca farmer in the town of Bolton, Massachusetts (pop: 5,376). He lives in an RV on the 34-acre property where he keeps his alpacas, and he sells their fleece to make a living.
DiPietro wasn’t always a farmer. He previously worked as a chief engineer for iRobot, a company that makes autonomous home cleaning devices such as the Roomba vacuum cleaner. He became disenchanted with the bureaucracy and red tape of the corporate world, however, so in 2008 he decided to leave that world behind and begin his alpaca-farming venture.
The years since then have not been the easiest for DiPietro. In 2014 he suffered a financially-devastating divorce that ultimately led to bankruptcy. After the bankruptcy, he still had some money in a 401(k), and he used it to buy the 34-acre property he now lives and farms on. The home he was living in was foreclosed, however, and he was evicted in 2016. It was then that he moved to the motorhome on the farm.
In the ensuing years, DiPietro found himself in a protracted legal dispute over how he could use his property. He had mowed some fields and had built some wooden fencing and small sheds, but he was later told these actions violated certain state and local environmental regulations.
As a result of various enforcement actions and lawsuits, DiPietro struggled to use his property in a profitable manner, and his financial situation became dire. He became delinquent on his property taxes in 2016, and 14 percent annual interest began accruing on his unpaid taxes.
As the years went by, the legal battle intensified and DiPietro’s situation only worsened. By 2021, he owed the town roughly $60,000 in unpaid taxes and other costs. The property value at the time was roughly $370,000, and DiPietro owned it outright.
A couple of simple solutions to his debt problem likely jump to mind. Couldn’t he just make money with the property some other way or sell part of it to pay his debt? Indeed, he could—if the town would let him. But the town stopped him at every turn. When he applied for a forestry permit to sell trees on his land, for example, the town’s conservation officials asked for it to be denied on account of his alleged environmental violations, and the department in charge of permits complied with this request.
He was also prohibited by the town from getting a guard dog and from connecting to the internet and electrical grid, and the town would not legally recognize his address. These and other restrictions undermined several potential projects. The town also refused to give him the permits he needed to sell part of his land, and the reason for the refusal was the fact that he had outstanding property tax debt.
In short, DiPietro was caught in a catch-22. He had to pay the debt to get permission to make money, but he needed money first to pay the debt.
With the debt remaining unpaid, a land court foreclosed on the property in December 2021, transferring absolute title of the land to the town as payment for the debt. The town has since initiated eviction proceedings to remove DiPietro from the property.
And what about the $310,000 in equity above and beyond the debt, the equity that rightfully belongs to DiPietro? Oh yeah. The town kept that…which it’s allowed to do under state law.
Noting the injustice, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) joined DiPietro in filing a lawsuit against the town on January 10, 2023, demanding he get back that portion of the equity which is rightfully his.
A Pervasive Problem
The practice of keeping the equity of a foreclosed property above and beyond the debt owed is known as home equity theft, and it’s a lot more common than you might think. Across the country, local governments and private tax lien investors regularly foreclose on properties for unpaid tax debts and then keep the whole value of the property—even though that value is often far greater than the amount of debt that was owed.
In 38 states this is illegal. Foreclosing parties are required to sell the property and return excess profits to the original homeowner. In 12 states, however—one of which is Massachusetts—local governments or private investors can take the entire value of a tax-foreclosed home.
A recent PLF report highlights how extensive this practice has become.
“In our study of 31 Massachusetts localities, representing one-third of the state’s population, the government foreclosed and sold 254 homes for tax debt from January 2014 through June 2020,” PLF writes. “Massachusetts law allowed the taking of an estimated $60 million in equity above what these homeowners owed in property tax debt. Another 154 homes were foreclosed for tax debts from January 2014 through December 2020 by a private investment company that purchased tax liens (the right to collect a tax debt) from the state. Massachusetts law allowed the taking of an estimated $37 million in equity above what these homeowners owed in property tax debt.”
DiPietro unjustly lost roughly $310,000 of equity, representing about 84 percent of his property value. This is a fairly typical case, judging by the PLF report. “In the localities we studied, homeowners lost 87% of their home equity, on average—nearly $260,000 per home,” PLF notes.
The argument in favor of this practice is that the lost equity basically amounts to a fine or penalty for tax delinquency. You broke the law, after all, and breaking the law has consequences, the reasoning goes. If a state deems that one of those consequences should be that you lose the equity in your home, so be it.
The arguments against this practice take a few different forms. For one, detractors argue that taking more value than what is owed is simply unjust. They also argue that this violates the “just compensation” clause of the Fifth Amendment, which states that if a government takes private property for public use it must compensate the property owners appropriately.
To those who would put forward the argument that this taking amounts to a fine, detractors would respond by pointing to the Eighth Amendment, which states that excessive fines shall not be imposed. Surely this is an excessive fine if ever there was one.
A final argument against this practice is the simple point that it tends to impact the most vulnerable members of society more than others. PLF comments on this sad truth in its report on Massachusetts.
“Like similar tax foreclosure schemes in other states, the Massachusetts system likely hits vulnerable people the hardest,” PLF writes. “Most people don’t intentionally fail to pay their property taxes. As with the Calkinses [another case] and many others, life happens. Homeowners get sick, experience personal financial crises, or miscalculate a late payment. Research demonstrates that the elderly, sick, and poor are especially at risk of losing their most valuable asset—their home—for unpaid property taxes.”
Theft Should Be Illegal—Regardless of Who’s Doing the Stealing
The nineteenth century French economist Frédéric Bastiat coined a term that aptly describes this practice: legal plunder. The law, says Bastiat, is supposed to prohibit theft, but all too often it is weaponized by governments and special interest groups to enable theft. Rather than being outlawed, plunder is legalized and legitimized.
How do we know when legal plunder is occurring? Bastiat gives us a handy diagnostic tool in his 1850 book The Law.
“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”
In a world of secure property rights, taking the entire value of a property for a much smaller debt would surely be a crime. In fact, some (including this author) would argue that property taxes as such constitute legal plunder, since they involve forcefully taking money from peaceful property owners.
Whether you agree with that or not, it should be clear that taking equity above and beyond what is owed is theft. Not only is this a grave injustice, it also harms vulnerable people and gives governments a powerful incentive to back these people into a corner, as the Bolton government did with DiPietro.
It’s long past time to end this predatory practice.
This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.
Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
We Heart Seattle is a volunteer team that decided it was time to take action in addressing issues facing the homeless population in the city of Seattle. The efforts started off small. They were mostly aimed at picking up the large amounts of trash left by and around homeless settlements. The group claims to have picked up over 320,000 pounds of litter and garbage. They’ve also been able to get nearly 70 people the resources needed to get off the streets and turn things around. Unfortunately the city of Seattle does not approve of the group and their efforts and they have been told to stop giving aid to homeless people.
Andrea Suarez of We Heart Seattle got invited to a zoom meeting with Seattle Councilmember Dan Strauss and a number of other city leaders. Suarez said, “Having cleared more than 100,00 pounds of trash and housing at least five people from (Strauss’) district, I assumed the call would be to thank our volunteers and include us in further outreach efforts.”
Friendly volunteers helping clean up their community. Image courtesy of We Heart Seattle.
Instead she was caught off-guard by the ambush, as she puts it, from the government. She was even told by REACH officials that her group’s efforts were “disruptive and confusing to the hard work of REACH and the Human Services Department has already been doing in Ballard Commons and Shilshole Avenue.” “I’m still asking myself, ‘when did volunteerism become disruptive?’” Suarez said in an interview with The Dori Monson Show.
The city’s main complaint was that the effort violated protocol and local laws on how camps should be handled and essentially destroyed. Suarez also points to union turf disputes between Seattle Parks and Seattle Public utilities about who picks up what trash from where. These disputes lead to the large accumulation of trash found in and around homeless encampments.
Despite the city coming down on her and her group she has no plans on stopping the good work she is doing for the homeless of Seattle. “I’m going to keep volunteering.”, she said. Her efforts cost nothing from the state or taxpayers while the official preferred response costs millions and have managed to lead to very little assistance reaching those who need it.
This is far from the first time the state has ordered volunteers to stop giving aid to homeless people in need. There are countless stories every year about people being harassed, fined, and even facing jail time simply for helping others without going through the state and its bureaucracy.
We here at Voluntaryism In Action firmly believe the world would be a much better place if the state would simply get out of the way of the people, especially in their efforts to give aid to those who need it the most.
Khaleel Seivwright is building insulated, mobile shelters for homeless people this winter. (CBC)
Winter in Canada is no joke. With average temperatures below freezing, Toronto is no exception. Shelter is essential to prevent Canadians from freezing to death. Yet the economic consequences of the government’s reaction to COVID-19 have left an increasing number of Canadians on the streets as winter looms closer. But one Toronto carpenter is defying the city to help the homeless.
Khaleel Seivwright, a 28-year-old carpenter, noticed the increasing numbers of homeless people in Toronto. Determined to do something about it, he started constructing small shelters and giving them away for free. With wooden walls, fiberglass insulation, a door, and a window, the shelters are nothing fancy. But they will keep people warm and could be the difference between life and death for some Canadians this winter—even though the shelters are technically illegal.
Ritchie is living in one of the completed shelters near Lake Ontario. Seivwright says Ritchie was living in a tent before he delivered the shelter. (Khaleel Seivwright)
“It just seemed like something I could do that would be useful because there’s so many people staying in tents,” said Seivwright. “I’ve never seen so many people staying outside in parks, and this is something I could do to make sure people staying outside in the winter could survive.”
Predictably, the government officials who get paid with taxpayer money when there are homeless people are not thrilled about Seivwright’s efforts. Gord Tanner, director of homelessness initiatives and prevention at the Toronto’s Shelter, Support and Housing Administration, admitted that “the system is very busy and very full.” With winter still on the way and the Canadian government’s COVID economic restrictions still crushing businesses, homelessness will likely continue to rise.
A Toronto homeless encampment is pictured in late May. Homelessness advocates say they expect to see more people living outdoors this winter due to the economic downturn caused by the government's COVID-19 restrictions. (Martin Trainor/CBC)
Despite this, in an interview with CBC Tanner refused to say if the city would take a more lenient approach to mobile shelters or other encampments this winter, though he noted that mobile shelters can pose “significant” risks to occupants, including as potential fire hazards. Reporters from CBC apparently did not ask Tanner if he thought homeless people would prefer the certainty of death from exposure to the risk of death by fire.
In any case, Seivwright says that the threat of law enforcement won’t deter him from helping people in need. “This is what I know how to do, this is what seems to be viable, so I’m going to continue to do this.” Each shelter costs about $1,000 in new material and takes Seivwright eight hours to construct. Seivwright is paying for the project largely through a GoFundMe online fundraising campaign—funded with voluntary donations.
Advocates for the homeless are urging the City of Toronto to dramatically increase the capacity of its shelter system, which would require forcibly taking money from taxpayers—and a large chunk of that would end up in the pockets of administrators. But as this Toronto carpenter is defying the city to help the homeless, his fundraising campaign exceeded the $20K goal by more than 400% in less than a month. Last week, Seivwright increased the goal to $200K—and as of this writing, it’s more than halfway complete. That means potentially lifesaving shelters for hundreds of Canadians, from an outpouring of kindness and compassion. That’s the power of voluntaryism in action.
