So Much for Southern Hospitality: Single Mother of 12 Homeless After Landlord Scam

July 6th, 2012 - By Alissa Henry
"House of Horrors"

Source: CBSAtlanta.com

A single mother with 12 kids is homeless after she says she was renting a “house of horrors” from fake landlords who have now disappeared.

CBS News reports:

The Southwest Atlanta home in the 1000 block of Sims Street has holes in the wall, broken windows and no hot water. Tacco Collins said she paid a company called the Real Estate Connection $600 a month to a stay in the home.

“I had promises that they were going to come and fix whatever needed to be fixed in the house,” Collins said.

The single mother of 12 said she waited seven months, but nothing was repaired. Collins said shortly thereafter, disaster struck.

“My biggest nightmare came of August 2011 when my light box caught on fire. Georgia Power disconnected my service because it was too dangerous,” Collins said.

Collins and her family have been using a generator for the last 10 months. She said she stopped paying rent when her supposed landlord refused to make repairs. They took Collins to court in an attempt to get her evicted and that is when she said she discovered the shocking truth.

“No one could provide the deed to the house. The people renting me the house don’t own it,” Collins said.

Now the “fake” landlords have disappeared, Collins has no place to live and she said the state is trying to take her children.

“The phony landlords should be paying the money back to my mom and they should also go to jail for it,” Octavious Collins said.

“I am trying to make some effort right now to work something out, but I am lost,” Collins said.

So, if the “Real Estate Connection” people don’t own the house then who does? Well, the mother tells CBS that the homeowner is a woman living in New York who didn’t know her home was being rented out and that woman has no plans on making any repairs to the house.

This sounds ludicrous, but it actually happens more than you think. If people see a house is abandoned, all they have to do is change the lock on the front door, and then they’ll have a key and can rent the house to whomever they want. The people living there are then called “squatters”. Sometimes the squatters know what they’re doing and sometimes, as in this woman’s case, they don’t. What’s odd is that this woman was actually taken to court by people who didn’t even own the house.

It seems there were all sorts of red flags here that either Tacco didn’t see or she willfully ignored, but I guess when you have twelve kids, you’ve got your hands full. In the video, you can see that the house is trashed, but it may be because she has so many people living in such a relatively small space.

All is not lost for this family though because CBS says Occupy Atlanta is working with them. The group said it hopes the public will help the family buy a home, which will be renovated by volunteer plumbers, electricians, and carpenters. Tacco hopes that can happen before DFAS takes her children.

What do you think about this story?

Follow Alissa Henry on Twitter @AlissaInPink

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  • Ms_Sunshine9898

    wow. . . stating facts is coming down on someone. i’m mad that you had to tell everybody off like this is a personal issue that has effected you once. it is what it is. the reality of the situation is she has all the kids, they more than likely have multiple fathers as she is a single black mother and that is very common in the black community, and she has no job, no education, and no father(s) to help her provide for her kids. those are facts home girl and if she’s asking for help from the public then clearly she’s asking me and everyone else who views her pleas for assistance. sit down. think about it. you clearly aren’t going out your way to help her either. your opinions don’t help her one way or the other either. . .

  • Ashley

    Being a single mother to 12 is not hard- my grandmother did it, and it was her strength that she passed on to all of us (children and grandchildren included). After her divorce she really had no choice. Please stop focusing on the fact that this woman is a single mother of 12. What is important is the fact that she’s taking care of ALL of them on her own, and she is capable of providing for them without any assistance up until now. What’s really sad is the fact that someone saw fit to take advantage of a woman who busts her butt providing for her children for their own financial gain. I feel that if she’s capable of paying rent plus utilities on her “rental” now, she would be capable of maintaining in a home of her own later. But as I said, please don’t judge. If you haven’t walked in her shoes then you have no idea what the whole story is that this woman is going through.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7NK4EZR7K5X5WA2W2VQZFW42XE ~Madcap~

      The house she was allowing her children to live in was deplorable. I wouldn’t let my dog walk in there, let alone my kids. Anyone who thought that that environment was appropriate for children deserves to have them removed. You may call that judgement, I call it truth.
      I have walked in her shoes, albeit to a lesser degree, but that was because I knew exactly how many I could afford to feed and didn’t rocket past that number with reckless abandon.
      You can’t in one breath say having 12 kids isn’t hard, and then in another decry not to judge until one has experienced the same hardships; either it’s hard or it isn’t, make a decision.
      In the event that is wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, which is what I’m banking on, she didn’t just all the sudden start going through hard times after the birth of #12. I’d imagine it’s been a struggle for a while. She could have, I dunno, stopped bringing more hungry mouths into the world circa #3 or #4, that might have lessened the burden.
      At some point, personal responsibility must come into play. This woman exhibits none. As such, there should be consequences, like the children being placed in stable, not filthy homes with function plumbing and electricity, that isn’t a complete cesspool-fire hazard. I know foster care isn’t ideal, but it is better than homeless or squalor.
      We license people to drive cars, teach our kids, practice medicine, operate heavy machinery, etc., but we’ll let any individual with a functioning uterus have a baby….or twelve.

  • http://www.facebook.com/MsGlorious MsGlorious Carruthers

    I cant stand u type of ppl…when OctoMom…needed help u ppl was all for it…now that a black women with12 kids..need a lil help when she is tryn to do right..and keep a roof over her childrens head need a lil…help…she ever worthless thing in the book…on top of that black ppl kill me..cant never help our own ppl but we quick to help everyone else so u can look good…lol wow…I take my hat off to this lady..she been doin her damn thang and now she is a lil stuck..if there is a site or anything i wud b glad to help out…i guess she gotta b half way on her dying bed to get any respect out of u ppl..Ill be praying for this family

  • theBAYAREArealist

    no person without gainful employment, education, and family support should have 12 children period. there are too many preventative measures for this and there is no excuse therefore i feel no sympathy for her. i feel sorry for the kids and they’d be better off not living in that circumstance. people cannot always be politically correct here. this is exactly what it looks like. its a cautionary tale that we’ve all been warned about and most of us are smart enough to go down the other path in life. no matter how poor you are or where you come from in America condoms are free and birth control is free or low cost in most places, if u cant afford birth control u cant afford 12 kids.

  • Ms_Sunshine9898

    where is/are the father(s) and why aren’t they making sure their kids are provided for? smh so sad she has to experience this on account of her ignorance and evil people taking advantage of her. . .

    • http://www.facebook.com/MsGlorious MsGlorious Carruthers

      there are alota families with 10to15 kids in them…why she gotta b so dumb… obviously she had a roof over there head wow…all black ppl can do is think the negative about eachother…ima pray for u to..cuz u have no idea what happing

      • Ms_Sunshine9898

        clearly that’s you, since you didn’t seem to understand that her ignorance was not knowing that they were running a scam on her. . .

  • mzb

    do not want to knock another persons hustle but this is the exact reason I am in college.

    • Angel

      +10000
      and im only having like 4 kids at the most

  • samoosh

    Just typical of Atlanta, the fraud capital of America. Happens every day and authorities are too lazy to do a damned thing about it, and the criminals all know that.

  • RedButterfly81

    I’m not gonna judge her because of her name and 12 kids because it’s not my place, but what she went through is horrible and I wish her nothing but the best and hopefully they will find a better place to stay. This story is about how she was done dirty by a fake landlord, not about her 12 kids and her name, some of you people need to grow up and stop judging her!

  • ICE

    2 things: 1.) her name is Tacco 2.) 12 kids. WTF?

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