New World Order University Forum

Media attention lately has focused on Elkhart, Indiana as the poster city for U.S. economic decline. That’s because Elkhart is the center of the nation’s RV manufacturing industry. RV sales have tanked, and most RV manufacturers have gone out of business or are facing bankruptcy. But Cleveland may be in worse shape. Alex Kotlowitz reports in the New York Times Magazine on Cleveland’s real estate problems. One out of 13 houses in Cleveland is vacant. When large numbers of homes in a neighborhood are foreclosed, neighbors often leave in a “downhill snowball effect. ” Who wants to live in a dangerous neighborhood populated by transients camping in deserted houses that have been stripped of plumbing, wiring, fixtures, even front steps? Plummeting house prices in bad neighborhoods leave most mortgage-holders under water. There is little incentive for them to remain in their homes. Around 100,000 residents have left Cleveland recently. Former middle-class neighborhoods have been decimated and probably will never recover. Kotlowitz does a nice job of explaining how mortgage companies and banks evade their ownership responsibilities, even ignoring local court decisions. The inability of the criminal justice system to catch up with and regulate the behavior of real estate predators emerges as a central theme in this failing system. Cleveland’s solution to the problem of gutted and abandoned houses is now to destroy them. That’s how much of the “stimulus” funding allocated to Cleveland will be spent.

Tags: Cleveland foreclosures, real estate price declines

This entry was posted by Director on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 3:54 pm and is filed under U.S. Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.