There Goes the Neighborhood

Wow, I read the news and I just want to weep sometimes.  I've been writing about anti-foreclosure efforts here, mostly focusing on helping homeowners keep their homes.  These three articles, from Boston (MA) and Boise (ID) detail the nightmare for renters living in foreclosed homes.  The first article starts with a picture of man using boiling water and a fan to heat his apartment.  The next describes how a woman with a disabled child lost her job due to too much time in court fighting an eviction proceding launched by a bank in Oregon.   The woman in Boise, also disabled, is losing her home of 11 years:

"The bank which owns the building has no interest in, and in fact has a policy against assuming any responsibilities of a landlord, and they will fight tooth and nail before having to fix anything or take on those responsibilities."

The bank, Wells Fargo, says it has no summary eviction policy.

And that's sort of it in a nutshell.  This economic collapse we're experiencing is just complete chaos.  Homes go into foreclosure, banks have an economic interest in selling the property as quickly as possible and don't want to be bothered dealing with tenants.  On the other hand, many of these buildings have fallen into disrepair in the period leading up to foreclosure, and are a hard sell to anyone outside of the tenants who would just like to live there, albeit with the required repairs and improvements.  But who's going to do those?  From Boston:

"These banks are nowhere to be found when there is any kind of problem. They only come around when they want to kick people out," said Dominic Desiaga, a volunteer with the housing activist group City Life and an East Boston resident. "This happens all the time."

GMAC, like other lenders, says it isn't set up to be a landlord, a position forced upon them by the foreclosure crisis. Cases such as Toussaint's, Bruin said, are prompting the company to review its processes to make sure tenants in buildings it owns are "adequately" housed. "This is becoming a bigger issue," she said.

Yeah, no kidding.

Existing tenants could be allies in these situations:

Some say tenants such as Johnson keep foreclosed buildings from deteriorating even more. "He is taking care of everything," said Kerry Spiller, a real estate agent who met Johnson while showing the building to prospective buyers. "Banks just don't care. Once the bank has it, it doesn't matter if the heat is not on and the pipes burst and it wrecks the place."

But the enormous, global, complex, bureaucratic, distant banks we have now are ill-equipped to pursue those partnerships.  Everyone in DC is all in a pickle about what to do over the banks' toxic assets attached to the packaging and selling off of these mortgages. No one knows who owns what and what anything is worth.

It'd be nice if we spent as much time and money trying to figure out a comprehensive, replicable solution to protecting homeowners and renters in foreclosed properties.  Local governments and activists are pulling their weight; is anyone listening in DC?