Local activists propose registry of foreclosed homes
| Friday, Oct 21 2011 05:52 PM
Last Updated Friday, Oct 21 2011 05:54 PM
Faith in Action, a coalition of local clergy and congregations, has a new campaign for the creation of an official registry of homes in or near foreclosure.
The idea of the "Bring Light to the Eastside" campaign is to assemble a reliable record of where foreclosed properties are and who owns them so that owners can be identified and contacted when vacant homes aren't properly maintained.
The registry would be modeled after similar registries in other cities, but complete details of the proposal have yet to be worked out.
Lenders and loan servicers would be asked to pay a small annual registration fee -- typically $125 to $200 -- and the money would be used to help fund additional staff in code enforcement.
Failure to register a property would result in a fine, usually between $500 and $1,000.
The registry is necessary because of the devastating impact large numbers of foreclosures have on communities, said Faith in Action volunteer Nancy Bacon.
"We know that homes that are empty and not being taken care of lead to crime, and ongoing blight brings down property values and affects the tax base," she said.
The program could generate at least $1.8 million in annual revenue for Kern County based on an estimated 13,829 foreclosed properties here, according to Faith in Action.
In the county's Fifth District alone, there are about 150 active cases of code enforcement violations, with 250 to 400 in any given month, but there is only one county code enforcement officer for each supervisorial district, the group said.
State Sen. Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, supports the idea.
"East Bakersfield -- all of Kern County, really, but especially east Bakersfield -- has been hit harder than most other areas of California and even the United States," he said. "If we know where those homes are, we can be proactive and reactive, proactive to work with families to direct them to resources available to help them keep their homes, and reactive to work with owners to avoid blight."
The California Banker's Association said it would need to know more details to take an official stand on Faith in Action's proposal, but it is dubious based on what it has seen in other cities.
"In general, these things are concerning to some of the industry, especially those that have multi-city or multi-state footprints," said spokeswoman Beth Mills. "The logistics of compliance with different rules in different areas is very difficult."
Moreover, there's already a state law on the books that allows banks to be fined up to $1,000 per property if homes are not cared for properly, so cities and counties already have the means to deal with problem owners, Mills said.
Bakersfield is the nation's eighth worst foreclosure market with 7,633 filings, according to the "Midyear 2011 Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report" published by Irvine-based real estate data firm RealtyTrac.
