Sep 27, 2008 11:57 am US/Pacific
Fed Aid Targets Foreclosure Blight In SoCal
RIVERSIDE
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Inland Empire communities are peppered with bank-repossessed homes that are sitting vacant and vulnerable to vandalism, deterioration and crime, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
AP
Inland Southern California is in line for $133.5 million in federal aid for local governments to deal with blight stemming from the foreclosure crisis, it was reported Saturday.
About $4 billion was approved by Congress and the President last month for local agencies to keep lawns mowed, windows repaired and doors locked at empty, foreclosed homes.
But California's two U.S. senators are not happy that California -- which has nearly twice as many foreclosure filings as Florida -- received less assistance than that state, the Press-Enterprise newspaper of Riverside reported.
In a joint letter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steve Preston, Boxer and Feinstein said California's share of the aid -- $529 million - is only 13 percent of the nation's total, even though more than a quarter of the nation's foreclosures are in California.
"This makes no sense, and it's totally unacceptable," Boxer and Feinstein said in the letter, cited by the Press-Enterprise.
Riverside County, which last month had the fourth-highest foreclosure rate in the nation, will receive the nation's third largest allocation of almost $49 million, the newspaper reported.
Inland Empire communities are peppered with bank-repossessed homes that are sitting vacant and vulnerable to vandalism, deterioration and crime, according to the Press-Enterprise.
"This is certainly one of the occasions where receiving federal funds is bittersweet," Riverside County Economic Development Agency spokesman Tom Freeman told the Press-Enterprise.
"If our economy and housing situation were in the shape we want it to be in, we wouldn't require such a substantial allocation," Freeman said.
Funds to enable local governments to buy, rehabilitate and sell bank-owned houses to low-income and moderate-income families were approved by Congress in July as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, according to the Press-Enterprise.
In California, Riverside County got the largest allocation and San Bernardino County got the second-largest of close to $23 million.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
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