Fighting the foreclosure crime wave

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Good morning. There is a reason gang members stopped partying in a vacant foreclosed house in Pomona last year: the imposing fellow at right moved into the house. Mr. ‘not on my block’ is Ron Anderson, a 240-pound realty agent. He lived in the house, fixed it up a bit and then sold it.

Anderson is featured in an L.A. Times story this morning about ways agents and cities are fighting back against crime and other fallout from empty, foreclosed houses.

‘Most of the properties are invaded because there is nobody there to stop them,’ Anderson says.

The story focuses on solutions, but it’s hard not to come away with the conclusion that the problems are outracing the solutions. The city of Lancaster, for example, sends code enforcement officers to trouble-prone houses and boards them up, and sends the bill to the bank that owns the property. Sounds like the smart thing to do, but a boarded-up home is an eyesore. Why not insist that the bank maintain it?

I was disappointed to read that a recent bill by state Sen. Don Perata of Oakland that would have fined lenders $1,000 a day for failing to maintain unoccupied properties -- a proposal that makes sense to me -- was narrowly defeated in the Senate on Jan. 30.

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo credit: L.A. Times