Prometheus 6

Chris Ragsdale, the Los Angeles Police Department's senior lead officer for Westwood and Bel-Air, recalled one case from the end of that era, when a group of men moved into a foreclosed house in Pacific Palisades. The squatters changed the locks, turned on the electricity and brought in furniture. When the agent trying to sell the place showed up, they maintained that they had a lease....

Paul Cargile, a Westchester foreclosure specialist, took over a South L.A. house a few months ago. When he sent his cleaning crew in to prepare it for sale, they found a woman living there. She produced a lease showing she had paid a man claiming to be the owner $1,600 in first month's rent and deposit.

Blight moves in after foreclosures
Untended properties become eyesores. Then there are the uninvited guests: mosquitoes, vandals and squatters.
By David Streitfeld
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 28, 2007

Houses abandoned to foreclosure are beginning to breed trouble, adding neighbors to the growing ranks of victims.

Stagnant swimming pools spawn mosquitoes, which can carry the potentially deadly West Nile virus. Empty rooms lure squatters and vandals. And brown lawns and dead vegetation are creating eyesores in well-tended neighborhoods.

In Northridge, the house next door to Michael McKenna's was put on the market, sold and then foreclosed on, all in the space of a few months last spring.

With the five-bedroom home now forsaken and deserted, McKenna has been reluctantly cutting the lawn and dumping chemicals in the pool to kill the bugs.

"I resent having to do this," the former studio production manager said. "It's breaking my back."

More than 100 houses a day are being foreclosed on in Southern California, up from 13 a day last year. That's still a relative handful for such a populous area, but even the optimists predict that the problem will soon get much worse.

If the foreclosure trend continues on its current pace, experts warn, communities will need to act decisively to avoid blight.

"We know it's coming," said Tina Hess, the assistant Los Angeles city attorney who handles housing enforcement and problem properties.