Disabled woman facing eviction after questionable house sale

Kathy, 62, minimizes her bipolar disorder. When she provides a list of disabilities for which she is receiving Social Security Disability Insurance, it’s usually the last condition that she mentions — and only with some reluctance and prodding from her daughter Natasha Beals.

Beals and her boyfriend, David Hardin, believe Kathy has been the victim of an exploitation that targets people who are facing tax foreclosure. And now they’re fighting to save Kathy’s house.

With only about $800 a month in income, Kathy — only her first name is being used to protect her identity — plays whack-a-mole with the bills. The tax bills fall behind. Each time she landed on the tax foreclosure list, the incessant phone calls began from real estate speculators looking to make a quick buck. One of those speculators was David VanDyke from The Walker Group Properties in Kent County, Kathy explained to City Pulse.

“They called me quite a few times before, they just called me at the right time,” she said. “He was very, very nice. He was constantly calling back. I was telling him about the situation I was in, how horrible the neighbors were and he would just laugh. He would be very understanding.”

Her statement illustrates one example of what Beals and Hardin think is part of the manifestation of her mental health problems. Kathy is convinced that her neighbors break into her house and steal peanut butter from the jar, only to return it later. Her house, she told City Pulse, is bugged and comedy material she says she creates is being transmitted to nationally recognized comic writers.

“My house was bugged. My phone was bugged,” she said. “Everything was bugged.”

While she made the statement in past tense, she said the bugs were active that very moment.

And because her comedy was, in her mind, being used by national caliber television shows, she was going to take the money from the sale of her house, pack up her belongings and move to New York to write for “Saturday Night Live.” It would get her away from the neighbors who broke in and stole from her, away from the bugs and also fulfill a “lifelong dream,” she said she had explained to VanDyke, the real estate broker who negotiated the purchase of her home in June.

Hardin was dumbfounded when he and Beals learned of the sale. He called VanDyke.

“I asked him: How many 62 year olds pack up and move to New York City and start working for ‘Saturday Night Live?’” Hardin said in an interview. “He said, ‘People do it all the time.’”

Kathy will face a 55th District Court judge Dec. 28 for eviction. She has only received about $15,000 of the $32,000 that VanDyke agreed to pay for the $50,000 home. The remainder was to be held in escrow until Kathy moved out, but has been swallowed up by $200 daily fees charged by the company for missing the move out date. Kathy is a “hoarder,” and that has complicated her living conditions and moving, Beal and Hardin explained to City Pulse.

Because of limited income — and the slight but fleeting financial windfall of the house sale — Kathy did not qualify for most local low-income housing. She also couldn’t show the income to obtain a traditional market-rate rental. And she has already chewed through the money she did receive to rent storage units. But the house is still full. And Kathy said she has nowhere to go.

This reporter spent weeks tracking down VanDyke and the Walker Group Properties. VanDyke finally answered his phone on Friday. When asked about Kathy, he said he was busy and could not have a conversation. When asked for a time, he said he needed to check his schedule and hung up. And he has not called back or responded to messages sent to his LinkedIn account.

VanDyke’s LinkedIn account identifies his position as acquisition manager for REI Bluekey LLC, organized out of Sterling Heights, which is registered to do business for The Walker Group.

REI Bluekey LLC doing business as The Walker Group received a $10,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan in 2020. It was forgiven this year, according to a ProPublica database on PPP loans. The company claimed the loan would cover payroll for some of its 30 employees.

The Walker Group’s address on its website tracks to a UPS Store in Kentwood. The only address for REI Bluekey is in Sterling Heights with the resident agent for the company.

Kathy’s 800-square-foot ranch style house in Lansing Township was transferred in September to Walker ISA 263 LLC of Denton, Texas. According to corporate records from the state of Texas, the address for that business is a five-bedroom, four-bath, nearly 3,000-square-foot home.

Ronald Walker, of Texas, is tied to all three companies. He did not return phone calls or emails.

Ingham County Treasurer Eric Schertzing said real estate deals like this, particularly with tax foreclosure properties, are less common than they were a decade ago during the housing crisis. But they are still happening. He said his office has a list of “bad players” that they keep an eye on to make sure local residents — much like Kathy — aren’t being bilked out of their properties.

But it is hard to watch every property. And as this case demonstrates, players can easily create new limited liability companies in Michigan to shuffle the paper trail and make contact difficult.

Schertzing’s files show numerous entries that his staff was well aware of Kathy’s declining mental health. In January, a staff member wrote, “I don’t think she’s OK.” Many of the allegations explained in this story and during the interview were included in the note.

Schertzing said he was unaware of any rule or law that required his office to call adult protective services in such a situation. A Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokesman confirmed that county treasurer employees are not considered mandatory reporters in Michigan.

Bradley Vauter is an attorney for Bradley Vauter and Associates PLLC in Grand Ledge who specializes in elder law and vulnerable adults’ legal issues. He said that Kathy’s story is not an uncommon one, but Michigan’s laws to protect vulnerable adults are murky — at best. 

In order for there to be a criminal process, the purchaser — in this case — would have to reasonably know that a person was a vulnerable adult, he said. But that leaves a lot of room for interpretation in the courtroom, and prosecutors are often wary of taking on such cases. Law enforcement can be even less likely to take a complaint and investigate them criminally, he said.

Vauter said those cases are instead often referred to by police as civil matters. And civil cases take money, which people like Kathy are unlikely to have available to them. Vauter said it’s the reason that older residents and people with disabilities have been snared into such disputes.

“This really is a morass — that’s a really good word to explain this,” Vauter added.

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