LAT: Exurban Blight - surge in foreclosures is taking a heavy toll [View All]

[El Pinko]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-foreclosures20feb20,0,5022514.story


Exurban blight

The surge in foreclosures is taking a heavy toll on formerly booming inland communities in California.
February 20, 2008

Last week, the research firm RealtyTrac released its foreclosure rate rankings for 2007. It was no surprise to see Detroit, long a poster child for industrial decline and urban blight, at the top of the heap. But what to make of the four California metro areas -- Stockton (No. 2), Riverside/San Bernardino (No. 4), Sacramento (No. 5) and Bakersfield (No. 7) -- that also appeared among the top 10? If the effects of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown go on unabated, will these cities too come to exemplify a new class of sunnier and warmer, but in other ways equally bleak, slums?

....

According to data from the foreclosure tracking firm Default Research, hardship in the Inland Empire and other parts of California appears to be concentrated in exurban neighborhoods such as Palmdale, Perris and Fontana. It's more than a little sad that the recent growth in these communities was fueled in part by an influx of Latino and African American families who took out sub-prime loans to buy relatively affordable homes -- homes as far away from the gangs and blight in neighborhoods like Pacoima and South Los Angeles as they could possibly get. (Those areas too suffer a disproportionate share of foreclosure activity.)

California's inland exurbs became boomtowns because borrowers, wisely or not, chased the American dream. Now they may face an American nightmare, different but no less dismaying than the one they so recently fled.