HUD: evicted 101-year-old Detroit woman going home (BLOG)

DETROIT (AP) — A 101-year-old woman who was evicted from her longtime Detroit home after her 65-year-old son failed to pay the mortgage is getting it back, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Wednesday.

Texana Hollis was evicted Monday and her belongings were placed outside the home where she had lived for nearly six decades. Her son Warren Hollis said he didn't pay the bill for several years and disregarded eviction notices.

"I screwed it up good," he told the Detroit Free Press.

HUD foreclosed on the property after Warren Hollis failed to pay property taxes to maintain a reverse mortgage taken out in 2002.

HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan told The Detroit News on Wednesday that the department would pay the taxes, remove the padlocks from the doors and let Texana Hollis return to the home.

"We were absolutely thunderstruck when we understood that a 101-year-old woman was put out of her home," Sullivan told the Free Press.

Sullivan said the department has told family members that Hollis can return to the house as soon as she is released from Henry Ford Hospital, where she was taken after the eviction.

Warren Hollis said he and his mother were "overjoyed" at the word from HUD.

"It boosted her spirits quite a bit," he said