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| Image by SEIU International via Flickr |
From Denny: A crooked Congress and a delusional President continue to ignore the millions of foreclosed homes at their peril. America's Winter Revolution is about to erupt like a super volcano before the New Year has a chance to arrive.
Yes, Americans are that fed up at inequality, unemployment, under employment, unfairness, a police state mentality against peaceful protests and double standards for the law.
Mayors across the country are equally desperate about how to deal with the huge inventory of abandoned foreclosed homes getting vandalized. The foreclosure scavenger thieves are quite sophisticated. They check out the evictions of the foreclosed homes at the sheriff's department online and arrive the same afternoon to rip apart the house like a demolition team.
Aluminum and vinyl siding is ripped off since it goes for $1 a pound. The same is true for electrical wiring, appliances and even the kitchen sink. They take the plumbing, the furnace, all metal like copper and the light fixtures. The houses are like a sad portrait of a hurricane disaster zone except this one is man made - and Big Bank made, if truth be told.
The mayor of Cleveland has come up with a solution to keep real estate prices from imploding further: he is demolishing the abandoned foreclosed homes the Big Banks refuse to tend or have not succeeded in selling. The prices of the remaining homes in neighborhoods are dropping rapidly because of these disaster homes the thieves have left like wrecks.
How many homes have been demolished on this new program? So far 1,000 homes. But get this, he has slated another 20,000 homes to get knocked down to make way for green space. That green space is being given to the neighbors in the hopes of stabilizing the housing prices. The mayor also is hoping the current homeowners will remain in place as taxpayers.
While the Cleveland mayor is just trying to help his city survive the economic meltdown and America's Second Great Depression, he has accomplished another feat. The mayor has effectively spanked the Big Banks financially.
All that inventory the banks foreclosed upon now no longer exists. Where is their investment now? It's been returned back to raw land. The Big Banks were so greedy to push the homeowners out of their homes rather than negotiate better terms on their mortgages that now the banks have nothing.
The Big Banks were convinced they were going to make all this money by reselling these foreclosed homes that now they get nothing. Remember the old proverb? "What goes around, comes around." The Big Banks chose to deny others, sending the message "you get nothing."
Now that bad attitude has come home to roost and it's the Big Banks that "get nothing and like it." How long before the other 29 major cities across the nation follow this mayor's example of how to spank a Big Bank? The Big Banks can kiss billions of dollars goodbye - and they did it to themselves.
There Goes the Neighborhood
December 18, 2011 1:38 PM
Bank foreclosures and abandonment are causing high home vacancy levels in neighborhoods across the country. Scott Pelley travels to Cleveland, a city that's fighting back against blight.
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