Foreclosure’s Impact on Baltimore

Foreclosed-on Shirley Ave. rowhouse, part of Baltimore's lawsuit against Wells Fargo Bank.

Richard Faison steps out his front door and the messy remains of the foreclosure crisis are just a glance away. The porch next door is littered with empty soda bottles and oversized trash bags filled with garbage. So overgrown are the bushes in front of this property, next-door to Faison’s northwest Baltimore home, that a passing stranger can barely see the front stoop. Barely visible behind the bushes is a boarded-up front door. There’s also a broken window.

“Just been terrible over there,” says Mr. Faison, 72, referring to the vacant property at 2520 Shirley Avenue that he says drug dealers and rats have frequently visited. “You can see the condition. You can see how it looks.”

The Shirley Avenue house is among 374 properties in foreclosure whose owners, the city of Baltimore alleges, were singled out for high-cost loans by Wells Fargo Bank as part of a reverse redlining scheme. The victims, the city charges in its civil complaint, were predominantly African Americans targeted for loan products they couldn’t afford or steered into them even though they may have qualified for cheaper conventional loans.

But there are other victims, the suit argues: the rest of Baltimore, which has to pay for the ugly consequences of foreclosure. And no Baltimoreans pay a higher price than the neighbors of foreclosed-on properties.

Stephen Faison says people drink and do drugs at the vacant property next door.

2008: Baltimore foreclosures skyrocketed
Fostered by a deluge of sub prime mortgages, foreclosure has hit Baltimore neighborhoods hard. Since 2000, more than 33,000 homes have fallen into foreclosure. In the last quarter of 2008, the number of foreclosures jumped 26 percent over the previous three months, the lawsuit says. The increasing number of vacant, boarded-up houses can be seen in communities from Southern Park Heights and Ashburton to Govans and Clifton-Berea.

The costs to the city are easily quantified — lost taxes, lower home values, increased property crimes and added maintenance. The city hopes to recoup some of that lost revenue and expense through its lawsuit against Wells Fargo, which has denied that it illegally targeted African Americans for predatory lending practices. A hearing in the case is set for June 29.

For Richard Faison, Bridget Ross and Lisa Porter, living near or adjacent to a foreclosed home has taken a toll on their lives every day.

Light-fingered loiterers go ‘clothesline shopping.’

“I leave for work in the morning at 5 a.m.,’’ Mr. Faison’s son Stephen said, in a sworn statement to the city. “I am worried each morning because there are strangers that loiter and sleep at the property” at 2520 Shirley Avenue, he wrote. “I am concerned that someone may try to attack me. I have seen people drinking there both inside the property and coming out of the property. I also believe that people are getting high on drugs. . .”

“My family cannot even hang clothing out to dry in our backyard because people who are loitering at the property will steal it,” he said in the statement. “We call this ‘clothes line shopping.’”

The younger Faison said his dog, Reds, a pit bull, contracted rabies from the rats next door and had to be put down a year ago. He blames the condition of the house on the bank that now owns it, Wells Fargo. Workers who were hired to cut the overgrown bushes at the house refused to clean up the garbage on the porch, telling the 25-year-old sanitation worker, “They don’t pay us to take the trash.”

A house at 500 North Clinton, part of Baltimore city

Bridget Ross complained about rats from the house two doors down, a small row house at 500 North Clinton Street that has been vacant for about two years. After she and neighbors complained that the house had been vandalized, the city boarded it up. When trash has been dumped there, Ross and her neighbors have cleaned it up.

“People when they see a vacant house, they throw garbage. It creates rats. I had called the city because of the rats… but the holes are back today,” the 49-year-old said, in an interview.

Ross moved to McElderry Park in 1995. It was a quiet, clean neighborhood of mostly senior citizens. Her tidy blonde brick row house reflects that sense of well-being. But Ross has a “For Sale” sign in her front window. She’s been trying to sell her house for two years. One potential buyer took note of the vacant house on the corner, she says.

“I believe that having the vacant property located so close to my home has made it difficult, if not impossible, for me to sell my home,” she said.

Lisa Porter, meanwhile, has lived in her home in the 800 block Arnold Court in East Baltimore for 35 years. The vacant house on her street that was in foreclosure has been stripped by vandals. Its yard is a dumping ground and rats have taken up residence there.

In short, Ms. Porter told lawyers for the city, “It has made my neighborhood a less attractive place to live.”

By ANN LOLORDO
Ann Lolordo was a longtime reporter and editor for The Baltimore Sun.