bank run blog

This BBC report focuses on the modern-day tent city adjacent to the Los Angeles/Ontario International Airport in California:

The unprecedented amount of foreclosures and evictions in Nevada, particularly in Las Vegas, has crammed the courts with legal actions. Banks filing to seize family homes, eviction actions, homeowners and landlords filing for bankruptcy protection, all have clogged the courts leading to an unprecedented backlog.

KLAS TV in Las Vegas quotes Judge Douglas Smith;

“We have such a backlog. It’s not the attorney’s fault, it’s really not the court’s fault, it’s the system’s fault…Las Vegas is the busiest court in the United States.”

KLAS added, “Legal experts say is not going away, as people continue to fight for their homes, they will go to court to stop it at any cost. That means more trips to the courthouse and more money we all have to pay to kick people out of their former homes.”
see story:
KLAS TV News: Foreclosure Crisis Causing Havoc in Courts

The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece today on the rise in foreclosure evictions in Contra Costa County, near San Francisco. The Chronicle reports, “In Contra Costa, the Bay Area County with the most foreclosures, deputies do 45 evictions a week, up 30 percent from last year.” One of the sheriff’s deputies told the reporter, “We have one every 15 minutes including drive time,”

The deputy said that the former homeowners are generally cooperative but, “There are a few who are holdouts…We have some where they tell you they’re not going anywhere,” and one time the deputies thought the house was empty:

“Then a guy came to the screen door - he had slit his wrists and had blood running down both arms. He said let him alone to die in peace. He wasn’t violent. I tried to explain to him that life goes on; this is a bad thing, but it’s not worth killing yourself over.”

The Chronicle says that many of the homes being foreclosed upon are in new subdivisions that were built over the past decade; “Prices in those subdivisions rose rapidly during the real estate boom days but now have fallen almost as rapidly,” with some areas seeing fifty percent reductions in property values in the past few years.

see link for full article:
In Contra Costa, evictions becoming common