by the El Reportero’s news services
Residents of one East Oakland neighborhood, including foreclosure victims and public officials, toured devastated neighborhood due to abandonment of properties.
They say they are fed up with blight and crime and they blame some of the problem on the foreclosure crisis. On Wednesday evening they made sure City Hall took notice.
Fannie Brown took Oakland City Councilwoman Desely Brooks on what she called a “reality tour” of the 11 block area from 78th Ave. to 89th Ave.
Brown, who says she has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 40 years, said that 150 homes in an 11-block area have been abandoned in the past year or so. Many of them were foreclosed properties. Brown said: “Our communities are being brought down, our property’s values are going down. We have drug dealing, trash dumping.”
She said the empty houses are magnets for crime and squatters.
After the tour, City Councilwoman Brown said she plans to propose legislation to require lenders who foreclose properties to maintain them, to make sure that they are not creating blight or are a neighborhood nuisance.
One homeowner, Gerald Ruffin, likes the idea. The retired forklift driver said that he is facing foreclosure after his mortgage payment went from $1500 a month to $2200.
The neighbors would like to see Oakland impose fines on banks and other owners of blighted property up to $1000 a day until the correct the situation. If they refuse, they want city employees to do the work and bill the owners.
