BUBBLE BUST: "The Pools of Riverside County"

[El Pinko]

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/the-pools-of-riverside-county/?ref=opinion


The Pools of Riverside County
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Look around at the still-life of half-built neighborhoods and red-tiled roofs, all so new, planted during the Miracle-Gro years when homes became A.T.M.s.

Look closer and you think you’re staring into a ghost exurb – empty homes left to bankers. This is the new America, Southern California’s affordable edge city, drowning in a sea of debt. In the Inland Empire, the eastern-most suburbs of Los Angeles, one out of every 43 households is facing foreclosure proceedings.

Peek behind the palm trees and there you see the most shocking sight: abandoned swimming pools, fetid and green, left to the elements and choked with algae. Thousands of people have walked away without even draining the water. Mosquito control agents now patrol these murky pools, treating them with pesticides to keep disease-carrying larvae from forming.

.....

Is this the image of our consumptive age: the empty swimming pools of Riverside County? The epitome of middle-class life as just another cash play? People who took out loans on houses they never could afford, hoping for a quick flip, have left this squalor under the sun to the mosquito-control agents.

[SoCalDem]

1. I live next door to one

:grr:

The bank FINALLY had it boarded up last week.. AFTER it has been vandalized almost daily for a month..

All these foreclosed properties should be rented..by mandate.. ANY amount of rent would at least keep them occupied and un-vandalized.. No one's particualrly interested in buying them, and having them sit empty does NO ONE any good..

[LeftCoast]

2. Riverside Co. has done this almost every ten years for the last 3-4 decades at least

The whole county is a freakin' boom-bust housing cycle. My parents lost their home in Riverside during the last bust in 1993. Boy did that time suck.

[yorgatron]

3. squatter's rights is going to make a comeback...

and the empty swimming pools will create yet another new generation of skateboard stars.

[SpiralHawk]

4. "We republicons are doing a heckuva job with the booming economy." - Commander AWOL

"Too bad 'n stuff about those little people, but on the Bright Side, republicon vultures will be scooping up those houses, and -- as an extra added bonus -- war profits are WAY UP for me and my republicon homelander oil & munitions cronies. Smirk."

- Commander AWOL