L.A. apartment building foreclosures rise
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How foreclosures are affecting low-income renters comes from the Associated Press story datelined Los Angeles, ‘Renting families forced onto street as landlords lose apartments to foreclosure,’ at latimes.com:
The foreclosure crisis is hitting inner-cities hard as landlords default on mortgages in record numbers and foreclosures force tenants into the street. Boarded up apartment buildings have become common on impoverished city blocks while emergency shelters are swelling with mothers with children. ‘The doors are busting down with people with this problem,’ said Mercedes Marquez, city housing general manager. ‘And the wave is still coming.’
More on the national and local pictures:
While the nation’s default rate on apartment buildings is still relatively low, it is rising quickly. Fannie Mae, for example, said its delinquency rate was 0.30 percent at the end of last year, double what it was at the end of September, and almost four times the rate at the end of 2007. In Los Angeles, neighborhoods in the city’s low-income south and central areas are being walloped. In 2007, buildings containing a total of 1,690 apartments were foreclosed on. In 2008, owners lost buildings containing 4,789 apartments, according to the city housing department.
That’s a lot of lost rental housing.
--Lauren Beale
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