By SUZANNE DOWNING
March 19, 2026 – Anchorage Assemblywoman Anna Brawley has taken the Marxist approach, promoting policies aimed at addressing vacant and abandoned properties across the city. Her policy beliefs cross the line between public safety enforcement and private property rights.
In a recent public statement and accompanying social media post, Brawley outlined what she described as a growing problem in Anchorage: unused and deteriorating buildings. She pointed to a range of causes, from negligent ownership to inherited properties that owners are unable to maintain, and argued that the city has a responsibility to step in.
“Throughout Anchorage, you can find vacant and abandoned properties,” Brawley wrote. “No matter the cause, these properties need to be cleaned up and managed, both for community safety and to get the properties back on the market.” It’s a way of saying that property owners must meet her standards, or else.
Brawley highlighted actions taken by the Assembly, including funding a demolition program and enacting code changes to make it easier to foreclose on abandoned properties and redevelop them. She framed the effort as part of a broader push to improve neighborhood safety and increase housing availability.
But the approach raises serious concerns about government overreach.
Private property rights have long been a cornerstone of American law, grounded in constitutional protections that prohibit the government from taking property without due process or just compensation. At its core is a simple principle: ownership means control, free from arbitrary government interference.
But in practice, that principle often collides with local efforts to address vacant or deteriorating buildings. Cities frequently lean on code enforcement and foreclosure tools to combat blight, citing public safety and community welfare. The result is an ongoing tension between protecting individual property rights and advancing broader public interests—one that continues to fuel legal and political debate.
At the center of the debate is the use of foreclosure and code enforcement mechanisms to compel action, or ultimately transfer control, over private property. While nuisance properties can and should be addressed, using public authority to accelerate foreclosures risks undermining fundamental property rights.
Vacant does not equal forfeited, and private ownership should not be contingent on a property meeting subjective standards set by local government officials. Policies that make it easier for the city to move properties into foreclosure, even under the banner of safety or redevelopment, set a troubling precedent.
The Brawley method is sometimes called “equity theft,” a practice once permitted in a number of states, where governments or third parties could seize not just a property for unpaid taxes or code issues, but also the owner’s remaining equity. Research has shown these policies often fall hardest on vulnerable property owners, particularly the elderly, low-income families, or heirs struggling to manage inherited homes, and can contribute to displacement and widening wealth gaps.
Concerns about due process are also frequently raised, including whether owners receive adequate notice, sufficient time to respond, or fair treatment when minor code violations escalate into the loss of long-held family property.
The equity theft issue is one that Brawley has created for herself as she seeks reelection to the Anchorage Assembly. The ballots from Anchorage voters must be in the mail by April 7.
Anchorage elections underway as ballots begin arriving in mailboxes
25 thoughts on “Assemblywoman Anna Brawley promotes equity theft through aggressive foreclosure of vacant properties”
There is another way the Municipality steals land from an owner. Requiring architects surveyors and engineers that will add huge amounts of time and money costs for no reason, makes it impossible for a lower middle class person to develop property.
I think you will find it very difficult to build any property, other than a single family home, that meets codes and stands up to things like earthquakes and gale force winds without hiring architects, surveyors and engineers. A professional design stamp is required because of that, not because the Muni is making any money off of those services. The Muni is responsible for inspecting the work and making sure all codes are met, but by the time they find a violation, it will cost a great deal of money to rectify that issue. The houses and businesses in Eagle River that had catastrophic damage during the 7.2 quake were not inspected, and in nearly all cases did not use an architect, engineer or surveyor in their construction. Using a professional is generally money well spent.
Time to ship that plump commie over to Russia or China for a few months to cut the fat from between her ears.
What a piece of …..work.
Brawley is a loser who knows nothing about property rights. She was a strong proponent of getting rid of any jay-walking laws because the people who were being run over were “under represented”, whatever the hell that means. Maybe people with vacant properties are “under represented”, too, and easily stolen from by government run by losers like her.
It’s a personal matter. It’s also a moral issue of family members not keeping up with property they either are not in town or they can’t afford to maintain houses and apartments. Morally they should had sold them before its maintenance declined and deteriorated to such an unsafe condition.
A big government dependent municipal that struggled with new housing on the market can just start fining the owners until it’s in possession of the municipality or its auctioned or sold.
But! Member Brawley solution does not solve that developers are not building homes for sale and rentals is higher than places are worth the rent. The municipal can always change that. IF they lower taxes and right size governmenT AND hold homeless and mental health organizations accountable that they actually hire employees who can decrease the Homeless and addiction issues on Anchorage.
When my grandmother got Alzheimers and was sent into an assisted living home. The family sold the land. Morally if one can’t afford a home or there is no family to live in it and maintain it, you should sell the land. It’s same moral issue that landlords should practice if they aren’t maintaining units they rent then go every one a favor sell the apartments. Just as I had a co worker who was living in a Mountain View apartment and the immoral landlord was renting units in a building where mice were living between the walls chewing their way into units. Absolutely disgusting! This isn’t the only landlord of Anchorage who is a pig and thinks his tenants should live like a pig too.
Trump spent TWO BILLION DOLLARS A DAY in the first six days of his WWIII. How do you believers in fiscal restraint and limited government feel about that?
Why does that have to do with Anne Brawley’s Cuban policies? Don’t you have homework to do?
Elizabeth. Yes, my post was off topic, but a global violent disaster is more important than city business. Downing is smart enough not to offer articles about the many failures of Trump because she would likely be targeted by nasty MAGA with death threats.
My, aren’t you so fond of making irrelevant, ragebait-y comments. Does the middle initial S stand for Strawman? I ask because “strawman argument” was the first thing to come to mind when I read this.
Sean. The only defensible response to Trump’s WWIII disaster is to condemn it, him and pretty boy Christian nationalist Pete hegseth. Your deflection suggests support for war. Do you?
Well, Bot Evan Sing, Trump could always eliminate whatever is using the two billion. It’ll give something new for your not computer program to complain about like that 2 billion eliminating the jobs dependent on continuing the funding. Americans are much too government dependent that it should be eliminated.
Wrong “peaceful protest”, Evan. Start walking south on the Glenn Hwy and turn right at Tok. Continue for another 2000 miles. You’ll see the kooks with signs on your left when you get to Seattle.
Money well spent!
Two Billion/day to prevent a nuclear disaster is peanuts.
I’m pretty good with it, Trump is playing 5th dimentional chess while the rest of the world is reading the instructions on elementary checkers. You might join with them as you surely have a similar grasp of checkers. Cheers.
Your cult leader cannot name and identify more than one chess piece, the king. Prove me wrong.
I have heard some real socialist, communist crap before but stealing property from people just because the government workers believe they have the right is just criminal theft. This as as bad as Bernie Sanders railing on the Senate floor about how much money Elon Musk has, as if anyone has any say about someone else’s money. I can guarantee one thing and that is, this tubby socialist won’t go after any properties owned by certain movers and shakers in this town or she will get her butt handed to her. Maybe I will form an equity group and we will go around and buy up some of these properties to hold as investments. I would relish the opportunity to hammer a few of these Marxist turds in court.
Support Brian Flynn’s campaign as he is running against her. She does not belong in any leadership position within a republic. She may be better suited to Cuba.
Cuba is on its knees now. I will donate an old set of knee pads and kick in some change for airfare. She would make a shoe-in candidate there and she wont have to worry about her glasses fogging up her vision or her brain.
I marked my ballot for Flynn this morning and ” No!” On all bond issues. win with Flynn!
Is that Chugach Way I see in the background of the photo? Before I left Anchorage, I recall that CIHA and JJ Brooks were working on demolishing a large swath of Spenard, including that area, in order to put up Anchorage’s newest ghetto of cookie-cutter apartments. Given that fact, is it mere coincidence that Anna Brawley is shown standing there?
She’s truly an AWFUL
She sounds like a communist.
Going after unused / deteriorating buildings is the shiny she wants you to look at while her majority and LaFrance scheme to grab actual used property. Technique is pretty simple:
– Jack up valuations well above what the actual worth of the property is
– Wait for the owners not to be able to make property tax payments
– Hold a quick foreclosure proceeding and grab the property for the Muni, selling it later for pennies on the dollar
The real targets of this are first time home owners and elderly , fixed income people. Other cities have had this sort of legalized theft regime and every single resident has suffered. Brawley is just saying the quiet part out loud and she wouldn’t be doing that unless her side thought the election was a slam dunk win. Up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen. Cheers –