If the Fed won’t fight the foreclosure mess- maybe the people will

While waiting in my second line for a new iPhone yesterday, I saw the front page of the Cincinnati Enquirer (refreshingly- a newspaper with real news on the front page) which had this article:

Price Hill residents sue bank | Cincinnati Enquirer | Cincinnati.Com
A Price Hill group sued an international bank Thursday, saying it forecloses on houses whose owners have defaulted but is refusing to clean up the now-empty properties, hurting area property values.
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Price Hill Will, which buys and rehabs houses to attract more homeowners to the neighborhood, filed suit in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court against Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. and others.

“These homes are not being maintained by the banks after they foreclose on them,” said Ken Smith, executive director of Price Hill Will. His group is a nonprofit economic and community development agency.

The suit accuses Deutsche Bank National Trust of ignoring Cincinnati orders to cut grass and weeds and to maintain the properties.

A Deutsche Bank spokesman said only that the company doesn’t own the properties. Instead, it acts as a trustee for investors who buy the properties. Critics say that stance allows Deutsche Bank to avoid responsibility.

Hamilton County Auditor’s Office records show Deutsche Bank National Trust is the owner of record for the three properties listed in the suit.

Price Hill Will says the bank owned no properties in Hamilton County a few years ago but now is the second-largest property owner in Price Hill, behind only the federal government.

Last year, Price Hill had 300 home foreclosures, the most in Cincinnati…

Which made me wonder- who has the most foreclosed properties in the city? On the West side? On the East side? And, why is it when I drove up Hoover Avenue the other day- I saw a once proud street looking like an overgrown ghost town?

There is a solution to this- make the bankers start cutting the grass and maintaining the properties, and maybe they may slow down on their kicking people out for not being able to pay for the balloon payments, penalties, and other tools they have used to “reclaim” their “assets.”

Way to go Price Hill. Maybe Jeffrey at Daytonology will do one of his awesome geo-data pivot maps to show us who hasn’t been doing our community any favors.

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