Jeb Bush's "ownership society" ... by gimleteye

This is how the "ownership society" is working out. The following quotes are from two separate news reports in Florida, printed below in entirety:

"Her father won't forget the two nights a few months ago when their luck ran out. Roberts and Fennell slept on sofa cushions in the woods wrapped in a plastic advertising banner."

"Lenders owned nearly 21,000 homes in Miami-Dade and Broward at the end of October, according to data firm RealtyTrac. Tens of thousands more are in some stage of foreclosure and vacant. According to Coral Gables-based realty firm EWM, about 30 percent of all homes listed for sale are in foreclosure or bank-owned."

Homeless tent city sprouts in Hillsborough
By Andrew Meacham and Saundra Amrhein, Times staff writers
In print: Tuesday, December 2, 2008

SEFFNER — Eight months ago, Richard Shuster moved into what he calls his
"gated community" — so named for the sagging gate between thickets leading to
his camp site near Interstate 75.

Before he lost his job as a welder, Shuster, 59, had a car and a rented room.
Now he joins others like him, whose tents can be found in the woods in
eastern Hillsborough County.

The numbers are hard to pin down, but the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough
County thinks the number of homeless has been climbing in recent years.
And they are pushing ever deeper into the eastern suburbs, officials say.
Not long ago, the area was Hillsborough's boomtown, the epicenter of the
housing bender.

Then the housing market collapsed, restaurants closed, and skilled workers
found themselves scrounging for a piece of a shrinking day labor pool. The
homes they rented or owned fell into foreclosure. Their landlords, once forgiving
over a late rent check, now resort to eviction.

The result: single men and women living in tent cities in the woods, families
sleeping in cars, and students sleeping on friends' couches. To many in
suburbia, they are invisible.

"The people I work with are typically a 'fly by the seat of your pants'
population," said Karen Mynes, a guidance counselor at Seffner's McDonald
Elementary School, which lists 10 children as homeless.

For these people, the usual safeguards are gone, she said.
"It's all these tiny little things where people have been cutting them some
slack," Mynes said. "Nobody has it to give anymore."
• • •
An American flag flies from a tree near Shuster's lakefront camp. He cooks on
a self-made brick fireplace and washes his clothes with dish detergent and a
toilet plunger. His child support payments, which mounted over five years
while he was in prison on a drug conviction, caught up with him in 2007. The
government began taking half of the $48 he earned at day labor.

"I'd rather have a place to live," he said, "but this is fine. I'm not living
house to house to house, looking at a wall two feet away."
• • •
Hillsborough sheriff's Cpl. Don Balaban partly blames the rise in east
Hillsborough's homeless population on the new soup kitchen in Seffner.
"What hurts the most is if you provide a soup kitchen and don't provide a
place to sleep," he said.

Six months ago, deputies started a homeless outreach program in response to
business complaints about burglaries by the homeless. Most just wanted a place
to sleep, Balaban said.

On their monthly roundups, deputies search the woods and under bridges.
Trespassers get a warning or are arrested if there's a warrant. More often,
though, the deputies give them lists of services and shelters.

Connie Farrington rejects the idea that a soup kitchen attracts homeless
camps. She is a board member of the I Am Hope Cafe, the feeding site that opened
in September in Seffner.

"The reason we opened the cafe was because we had so many homeless people
already here from the rest of the county, with more coming in," she said. "We
knew we'd be full before we opened it up."

During a recent sweep by deputies, several homeless men said they've been out
of work for months. Day labor jobs they relied on have dried up. Even if
there were jobs, they said, there is more competition from homeless men coming
from Tampa.

Construction work in the once-booming neighborhoods of east Hillsborough has
been declining for some time. Permits for single family homes in
unincorporated Hillsborough are about half of what they were a year ago,
"Ain't nobody doing that no more," Mickey Naylor, 50, said of the day labor
construction jobs. He now lives with friends after getting robbed in the
woods.

On a recent outreach patrol, Deputy Rob Thornton and others stopped at the
former Johnny Carino's Italian restaurant, now an empty building in a strip
mall with Lowe's and Linens-N-Things on Causeway Boulevard in Brandon. Inside
they found signs of a homeless outpost — blankets, luggage, soiled jackets,
beer bottles and Taco Bell wrappers where booths and tables once stood. Outside
they stopped two men. We weren't sleeping there, the men said, insisting they
were staying "at large."

Eric Silva, operations manager at Linens-N-Things, said he hasn't seen anyone
breaking into the former Johnny Carino's. But for most of the past year, he
has noticed an increase in homeless people behind the store.
"The trash will be full, and the next day I'll come out and it will be
empty," he said. As his store prepares to go out of business, Silva said, he
empathizes with the homeless.

More than a dozen people populate the woods behind Advanced Auto Parts in
Seffner.

"As far as we're concerned, it's only an issue when there's an impact on our
customers, and in that case we call the police," said company spokeswoman
Shelly Whitaker.

Lesa Weikel, community relations manager at the Homeless Coalition, said her
agency has been getting more calls from newly homeless or those about to
become homeless. Most are from people who have lost jobs and can't find work, she
said.

The Homeless Coalition's last census, in January 2007, found 9,500 homeless
people — a figure the agency believes was low due to bad weather. The agency
believes the number today is even higher than their 2005 estimate of 11,000.
The county is woefully short on shelter beds — only 1,500, Weikel said. She
thinks the answer is more one-stop centers offering soup kitchens, job
information and shelters. "No one group is going to be able to solve the problem,"
Weikel said.

Meanwhile, families like that of Ed Roberts, 38, walk a frightening economic
tightrope. A year ago, he worked as a cook. His wife, Deborah Fennell, was
about to be promoted to manager at a Wendy's restaurant.

Then Roberts got laid off. And a background check for Fennell turned up a
2001 bad-check charge and she was fired. The couple couch surfed with friends
while their teenager lived with Roberts' sister. Roberts recently found work as
a handyman, and the family is back under one roof.

Summer Roberts, 15, said the uncertainty made her more compassionate. "A lot
of my friends say they have it bad because their parents won't let them go
out," she said. "I say, 'Well, at least you have a place to live.' "

Her father won't forget the two nights a few months ago when their luck ran
out. Roberts and Fennell slept on sofa cushions in the woods wrapped in a
plastic advertising banner.

"That was all it took for me to snap up and say, 'I can't live like that,' "
he said.



Posted on Fri, Dec. 05, 2008
Miami-Dade makes lenders maintain vacant foreclosures

BY MONICA HATCHER
Hagen Hendrix never thought selling homes would require him to pack heat.
But the real estate agent now brings a pistol when he visits the foreclosures he is trying to sell for banks, in case he runs into ne'er-do-wells squatting in the long-vacant homes.

Job safety is one reason Hendrix supports Miami-Dade County's plan to require lenders to start maintaining vacant homes before they have finished foreclosing. Another ordinance requires lenders to provide buyers with a full report of building and zoning defects. The laws, passed Tuesday, are the latest endeavor by local governments to prevent blighted properties from dragging down home values.

Other real estate agents believe the extra measures -- which only pertain to homes in unincorporated Miami-Dade -- will add headaches and slow the selling of bank-owned homes.

Typically, foreclosures are sold ''as is,'' with limited or no inspections. The new law requires a building and zoning inspection by the county that would uncover defects or code violations. Inspection reports must include estimates of repair costs and be recorded with the county clerk where the public can review them.

''There's nothing wrong [with `as is']. People aren't lying to you,'' said Alex Doce, president of Miami-based Baron Mortgage. ``When you go to an auction, there's a reason why you're getting such a great bargain.''

In addition to slowing down the already complex foreclosure process, requiring lenders to maintain homes before they actually own them could expose them and their representatives to legal liabilities, lenders and agents say.

Commissioners, though, fear that as interest in buying bank-owned homes grows, naive bargain hunters may end up getting stuck in money pits. Foreclosures are often stripped of wiring, appliances and fixtures, if not by homeowners then by burglars.

The moves by Miami-Dade reflect the ongoing efforts of cities throughout South Florida to govern the way banks sell the growing number of homes they take back from borrowers.

Lenders owned nearly 21,000 homes in Miami-Dade and Broward at the end of October, according to data firm RealtyTrac. Tens of thousands more are in some stage of foreclosure and vacant. According to Coral Gables-based realty firm EWM, about 30 percent of all homes listed for sale are in foreclosure or bank-owned.

In Florida, it can take up to a year before a lender gets title to a property through foreclosure. But most homeowners move out before then, leaving the home empty and untended for months. That leaves local governments struggling to pick up the slack, spending scarce resources to mow laws and clean pools.

''The problem is going to become more and more exacerbated,'' said Commissioner Barbara Jordan, whose district covers Miami Gardens and Opa-locka, which have some of Miami-Dade's highest foreclosure rates.

But the new laws may make the problem worse, says Doug DeWitt, a local real estate agent who also manages foreclosures for lenders. 'I believe if my asset managers were told you need this and that . . . they would say, `Just put this file to the side of your desk and we'll talk about it later.' And six months would go by and neighborhoods would suffer,'' DeWitt said.

DeWitt also said it did little good to have such ordinances in only unincorporated areas, and that a concerted effort among cities was needed to make a difference.

Several cities, including North Miami and Hialeah, already have more stringent rules mandating that houses are fully livable before they can change hands, meaning working utilities, bathrooms and a kitchen -- a major obstacle given the condition of many foreclosures.

Hendrix said he nearly lost a deal on a North Miami home because the buyer's agent had not secured an inspection, delaying the closing.

''In one to two weeks, interest rates could have changed, the process on financing can have to start over,'' Hendrix said. Hialeah officials said they were trying to be flexible with lenders and agents and were expediting inspections.

Cities in Broward are taking similar steps. Over the summer, Coral Springs began requiring lenders to register properties with the city as soon as they filed a foreclosure so that code enforcement officers could alert them when problems arose. There are about 170 properties registered, said Assistant City Manager Erdal Donmez.

As for keeping up homes before misfits strike, few argued against the need to protect the value of a home and its neighbors.

But Jim Angleton, senior vice president of Miami-based Republic Federal Bank, said forcing lenders to maintain homes before they own them was ``foolish.''

''If we haven't received title, we're inheriting someone else's liabilities,'' Angleton said. ``Some borrowers go bankrupt or play stalling games of reinstating the mortgage, then they don't come up with the money.''

A bank representative was once prevented from inspecting a foreclosure on Fisher Island because he could not prove the bank owned the home and was blocked from riding the ferry, Angleton said.


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