Pacoima residents want city to fight blight

Guillermo Zamora is living a nightmare any homeowner can identify with. The house next door to his, in Pacoima, is an abandoned eyesore after a foreclosure.

Weeds have taken over the yard. Gangs have tagged the walls. An abandoned car sits out back. Electrical wires dangle precariously from the house. The back windows are full of what appear to be bullet holes, and the house is infested with armies of bugs.

Zamora, a forklift operator who was washing his car in a spotless yard when I approached, said he wishes someone would build a big wooden fence around the whole thing.

"The banks own it," he said. "They have money."

The city of Los Angeles has taken the same position, and beginning July 8, it will start fining banks $1,000 a day if they don't maintain such houses.

But there will be fireworks, for sure. The city wants the bank to start maintaining a house or face a fine as soon as a default notice is filed. But Beth Mills, of the California Banking Assn,. argued that banks aren't the legal owners until the process is done.

"In some cases, that can take over a year," Mills said.

Attorney Tania Cardoso, who represents several banks, argued against the ordinance, which was adopted last month in a unanimous City Council vote. I asked her if there will be lawsuits when the city tries to impose fines.

"There absolutely will be," she said.

On the other side, deputy L.A. City Atty. Suzanne Spillane had this to say about the ordinance:

"We're fully prepared to enforce it and defend it."

Let the battle begin.

Estimates vary, but between 29,000 and 40,000 homes are in foreclosure in the city, many of them in disrepair or with squatters living in them. It's not clear how the city can undertake such a massive enforcement campaign or how many lawyers the banks will line up to stand in the way. But in Pacoima, where one in 10 houses is in some stage of foreclosure, residents are hungry for enforcement.

Zamora worries about loiterers starting a fire that spreads to his house, and he doesn't think it's fair that his home's value is suffering because of a mess he didn't create. Two blocks away, Rosa and Martin Mariscal see delinquents at vacant properties, and they worry about walking their kids down the street past people who are drinking or using drugs.

Christina Livingston, of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, teamed with City Councilman Eric Garcetti's office and has been working in the Northeast Valley and South L.A., advising angry homeowners to report blighted properties and post photos at http://www.LAHoodwinked.com.

"Don't let Big Banks Hoodwink Our Neighborhood!" says the headline on that site.

The banks alone didn't create this problem, of course. People foolishly bought houses they couldn't afford, didn't take the time to read the terms of their sometimes-deceptive loan terms, or lost jobs as the economy tanked.

As banks take back foreclosed properties, though, they ought to show respect for the neighbors, and they need to remind themselves that it'll be easier to sell houses that are in decent shape.

"I think they bear some responsibility for creating this crisis in the first place," said Garcetti, so they ought to be held at least partly accountable for the cleanup. He said that some banks, but not all, are already doing the right thing.

One vacant house in Pacoima had mountains of trash in the yard. I saw a neighbor across the street and asked what he thought about the mess.

Paul Bright, 24, told me that it had been his family's home for more than 50 years, and they'd just lost it to foreclosure. They moved across the street, where they're renting, and it pains him to watch his old home fall apart.

"We were in debt up to our ears. It's heartbreaking," said the Starbucks barista, who told me he's been accepted to UCLA but can't attend because of his financial fix.

"I've learned so much from all of this," said Bright, who believes "everyone bears some responsibility" for the mortgage meltdown. His mother should have been smarter about finances, he said, but "she got really taken advantage of" by lenders who misled her.

Predators of all types are still out there trying to make a buck off of people's misfortune. Martin Mariscal told me his brother got into trouble on his mortgage and went to a loan modification agency that charged him $1,200 a month to get him straight. Several thousand dollars later, he still lost the house, and I'm told that's a common scam.

Records show that the first vacant house I visited, next door to Mr. Zamora, is in the hands of Deutsche Bank National Trust Co. When I called to see if the bank plans to clean up the property, I was told the trust is merely a stand-in, and "the true owners are the investors who bought mortgage-backed bonds."

They sent me a lovely statement that said in part:

"The trust company itself has no beneficial ownership stake or interest in the underlying mortgage loans of a securitization."

Well, that clears up everything.

They referred me to "the servicer," who's supposed to be responsible for the property.

I left a message, and in the meantime, I wish Mr. Zamora luck getting the mess cleaned up, and I wish the city luck going after the bloody jackals.

Original story appeared at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopezcolumn-20100613,0,275932.column?page=1