In cities, one follows the other: Foreclosure, abandonment, dilapidation and demolition

The ever-expanding ripples from the nation’s foreclosure crisis have presented challenges for almost every state in the union.

And among those states, Ohio ranks 10th, with a foreclosure rate of 3.5 percent, and an average decline in housing prices of 14.1 percent.

As bad as that sounds, it pales in comparison to Florida, which had the nation’s highest foreclosure rate at 11.9 percent and a loss in home prices of 49 percent.

Obviously, the first priority should have been to forestall foreclosure, because in every foreclosure someone’s credit rating took a near fatal hit, and in most foreclosures both the borrower and the lender lost. Economists will argue for years over why more wasn’t done or couldn’t have been done. And there will be a lot of anecdotal evidence submitted to paint a portrait of uncaring mortgage holders and a bureaucracy that was unable or unwilling to react quickly enough. But as we pointed out in an editorial late last year, of the 1,819 foreclosures in Mahoning County in 2010, 90 percent of the mortgage holders did not raise a fight or even hire an attorney.

Bruce Broyles, a Boardman attorney specializing in foreclosure issues, pointed out that a variety of options from legal and social-service agencies are available to stave off the loss of one’s home. Other help is at hand to assist delinquent mortgage holders from becoming targets of foreclosure in the first place. No one should let their home (and their credit rating) go without a fight.

Responding to a crisis

Be that as it may, many communities, especially cities, now face a housing crisis that was decades in the making and has only been exacerbated by the foreclosure crisis. That is the problem of abandoned houses, structures that first become targets of scavengers who strip copper plumbing from the interior and aluminum siding from the exterior, and go downhill from there.

A study by Houston police concluded that when a neighborhood has 2.8 foreclosures for every 100 owner-occupied properties in a year, violent crime in the immediate area goes up 6.7 percent. That’s because many abandoned houses become havens for drug abuse and other crime.

With that in mind, we applaud the announcement last week by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine that $75 million has been allotted to a state housing demolition program that will help cities like Youngstown, which has an estimated 2,000 structures that should be demolished, and Warren, which has 1,000.

The cities are going to have to scramble and be resourceful in coming up with matching funds for the state grants, but this opportunity is too good to pass up.

Both cities have far more solid housing stock than abandoned homes, but empty, stripped and dilapidated houses are an impediment to saving those nearby occupied dwellings. Tearing down houses that are past being rehabilitated is the best way to stop a domino effect that brings down entire neighborhoods. And will eventually bring down entire cities if not checked.