San Jose Reaching Out To Clean Up Foreclosed Neighbourhoods

September 21st, 2008 | Tags: Foreclosed Properties

More foreclosures mean more vacant houses threatening the health of the locality. San Jose is reaching out to clean up foreclosed neighbourhoods. It is insisting on the caring and maintenance of deserted derelict foreclosed houses.

Fires tend to break out when the lawns are covered with tall grasses and weeds. The vacant houses invite vandals and trash creates eyesores says Michael Hannon of Code Enforcement. He added that a year previously one inspector sufficed to the man the vacant housing operations. Today he has had to distribute the responsibility among 20 inspectors.

Recently a report has been released that provides a detailed picture of the foreclosed houses from May and on to July. It also gives an account of how the city is tackling the problem of these foreclosed units. Most of the concentration is in the east side. In zip code 95122 of all the houses 2.6% were in foreclosure. In the other three zip codes of 95111, 95116 and 95127 the foreclosure proportion hovered around 2%. Stockton is the worst affected zone. In the second quarter the foreclosure rate was 4.0%.

Leslye Krutko, the director of Department of Housing said, “When you look at the number of families impacted, it’s a large number, and we need to be responsive as much as we can.” He was talking of the families who had been affected by the crisis. Numbers cannot count their pain.

Most of the vacant properties in San Jose belong to lending companies. The neighbours are complaining about them but the lenders cannot be contacted easily because of multiple mortgages on one unit. However a database has been compiled so that they can be contacted and held responsible for the blight. Hannon said “If you’re a lender the city expects you’re going to maintain that property so it doesn’t blight the community.” Today these vacant units have become an ‘attractive nuisance” and one can be sure that vandals will sneak in. This is what the city and its residents want to avoid.

Hannon stipulates that those lenders who fail to maintain their units will be heavily fined for multiple violations of the law. They will be billed if the city has to step in to see to the needful protection of the house and the locality. It is unfair for the residents to have to pay for the cleaning up.