Foreclosure Problem: Fire and Robbery on Empty Houses
Posted in Foreclosure Crisis, by Courtney AllenAtlanta’s urban centre has very green neighborhoods which are thick with trees and filled with chirping insects and animals. From here to Charlotte, there are about 2.2 million homes that are about to be foreclosed. These houses are going to remain empty till the time the mortgage melts down.
In Mesa, Arizona, officials are attempting to decide on what to do with boarded-up McMansions that are now mostly abandoned properties. In Atlanta, the problem of robbery occurring in abandoned houses is increasing by the day. There have been many homes that have been pilfered and entirely emptied homes are found as well. The police even caught a man building a new home altogether from all these pilfered materials.
In Atlanta, thieves have created such great mayhem that there have been many instances of fires breaking out from these areas set by robbers or gangs of teenagers lodging in these emptied houses. Flint in Michigan is one of those areas where firefighters and ladders have been added by security officials, even though the total population has declined significantly. Statistics show that about 90% of the fires start from homes that have been abandoned.
Photo by Shoes on Wires
Global Insight, an economic research oriented firm, has confirmed that the housing clusters fall far from Wall Street. These urban, abandoned towns are resulting in a large amount of growing weeds and trash in that area. Dereliction is being seen occurring at a rapid rate. A sight such as this has previously not been seen in the major American cities since the Great Depression. The economic situation is more than scary at the moment.
A $4 billion project is on the cards, which is helping tackle fire related damage. US mayors have met the previous weekend to air their opinions about the damages that have taken place in the last few months. The meet took place in Miami. These cash-strapped cities are now waking up to the fact that they need to do something about the damage already occurring in their midst.
Suddenly, there seems to be a vulnerability to crime, and there seem to be losses of millions of dollars in real estate and equity that have largely been the result of a loose credit opportunity. There has also been a lot of predatory lending. Economists have taken a lot of approaches to make market corrections on this front. It does not adequately describe the problems, but the urban affairs professor, Joseph Shilling, of Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan in Blacksburg, says that the problem is not just restricted to the urban core but is also prevalent in new suburban communities.
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