Explain your situation and see if there are payment plans or hardship programs available.The BiggerPockets forums have threads on tax liens and foreclosure prevention: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/41/topics/766025-surplus-funds-unpaid-taxes-in-foreclosure-saleAn experienced real estate attorney can advise you on your legal rights and explore potential solutions.Have you spoken with your local tax authority yet?

What specifically did you expect them to do to prevent them?

I understand this may prevent me from getting the absolute best terms on a HML, so I'll turn to professional before I settle on a lender, but I'd like to start the shopping process on my own.

If multiple people chose another house for the same reason or avoided yours for the same reason, maybe you can pivot a little to prevent that issue being a factor for future prospective renters. 

@John Voychick I'm so sorry to hear about your experience, it really pains me to hear about people getting subpar treatment and customer service I always listen to people's experiences to make sure that I can prevent these kinds of things from happening to my clients.

There are, of course, also things like politics and tax policies preventing the New York side from developing its tourism sector to be on par with Ontario... 

In our student houses we use a programmable thermostat, but our building monitoring system has its own sensors and can override the wall thermostat and will not allow the temperature to get below 10C (50F) ... we are presently testing a new software load that will also prevent them from cooling the house too far in the summer.

Trump has said many times in recent days he wants to prevent evictions, but his latest executive order does not ban evictions.

They "what if" it to death and allow the fear of failure to prevent them from ever entering the game.

Restrictions are placed to prevent potential buyers from acquiring those properties before they are disposed of by banks.