For those who didn't have to leave their homes, the foreclosure crisis probably seems very far away from the Los Angeles where housing prices are steadily on the rise and the housing market (well, the more expensive part of it) is coming back with a vengeance. But the after-effects can be seen all over the city in the abandoned (or abandoned-looking) houses that have been left behind. Four years ago, Los Angeles created a foreclosure registry to bank-owned houses with the goal of preventing them from bringing down their neighborhoods, but a recent audit found it has totally failed in that respect. (Houses remained blighty; not a single fine was issued.) While LA figures out how to improve its flawed system, the LA Times has used information from the registry to create an interactive map showing foreclosed houses and highlighting the problem ones.
Foreclosures are represented on the map by orange dots; residences that have been the subject of neighbors' complaints (for looking slummy, for being filled with squatters) are red. Some of the dots are noticeably larger than others, meaning that there have been multiple complaints or multiple foreclosures on a property. Hovering over a dot will tell you the address of the house, the bank that owns it, and the name of a responsible party for property management, whether it's a person or firm. The Times notes that the hardest hit areas were South LA, the Eastside, and the Valley, but one look at the map and it's clear that they problem touched pretty much every part of the city. As of May of this year, there were around 4,300 buildings in the registry.
· Foreclosed properties still dragging down neighborhoods [LAT]
· LA Hasn't Collected a Single Fine on Blighty Foreclosed Houses [Curbed LA]
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