The source for the mortgages being paid was Zillow or another real estate website. It shows when houses are paid off and when you looked at about a square mile around the school all the houses were supposedly paid off on the same day, Christmas, which is weird too because banks are closed on Christmas
That sounds like an internet myth. Zillow and other real estate sites don't show mortgages because mortgages are not public records like property taxes are. I'm sure a private detective could dig it up but it's not readily available. That's why I would not believe it until I saw evidence. Also some of the houses were surely inherited or the owners were wealthy enough to pay cash or they lived there 30 years and paid it off. They would have no incentive to keep quiet.
Here is the video of a guy going thru the tax site, I also went thru the same site and found it as well:
https://files.catbox.moe/30rhxr.mp4
here is gene rosen's house, paid 12/25/2009 sale price $0
Thanks for digging that up. It's interesting but the video maker is confused about sales and mortgages. The city records every real estate sale for tax assessment purposes but knows nothing about whether the owner has a mortgage or not. So looking at these records doesn't show that "mortgages were paid off on Dec 25, 2009." It seems to show a sale on 12/25/09 for zero dollars which seems impossible.
Also the shooting was on Dec 14. 2012 so that would mean the residents were paid off 3 years before the event. That would be an odd way to work a scam. Some of them would have sold their houses and moved away by 2012.
My theory is that the city installed a new property database in Dec 2009. They needed to enter data for every address in the city. They used Christmas day as a fake sale for zero dollars in order to have baseline data for every address. The assessed value for Rosen is $160,640 in 2017 which is how the city calculates property taxes. When Rosen sells the house, the actual date and price will be the next entry and used for the new assessment value. But this does not show that he was "given a free house" he already lived in or that his "mortgage was paid off" as the video claims.
The sale price, date of closure, appraised value are all public. Because sale price can effect neighborhood appraisal.
I don't remember who showed what, but they did show closure on Christmas, several homes, and a couple were demolished Iirc. As was the school.
I saw it myself. I even went to the website. I’ll try to find out what site it was on
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