As defaults increase steaply due to subprime mortgages or ARM loans, many individuals are witnessing their neighbors caught up in the meltdown. And the defaulters misfortunes are severely affecting those who are left living in those particular communities.
In addition, the problem is not simply restricted to the poorer areas, because they are also finding their way into upper/middle-class neighborhoods as well.
The courts are simply seeing more default and foreclosure traffic these days. BTW if you need a good lawyer and you live in Southern California, contact Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorneys In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, for example, which has a plethera of expensive houses, they are fighting various inner-city issues such as gangs, narcotics, arson, theft and of course a lot of graffiti.
You see, during the height of the boom, this suburb near the state capital grew 10,000 houses in only 4 years time, attracting investors from the affluent San Francisco bay area. Now many of those same houses are empty, with weeds overtaking their lawns, and various bank repo signs
lining the area. Median house prices have dropped from around $570,000 to the low $400,000s or so, unfortunately.
As a matter of fact, it may surprise many individuals to note that California ranks 2nd out of fifty states in the country with 1 foreclosure filing for every 88 households, according to the statistics.
Yes, number 2 on that most unprestigious of scales.
The house owners themselves have no options but to accept any renters they can find, according to the folks involved in regional real estate there.
Furthermore, criminal elements have looted some of the vacated houses, even going so far as stripping them of copper wiring plus pipes which may be then sold as scrap to recyclers.
Banks are not watching their foreclosed properties very closely, according to Modesto Police Chief Roy Wasden.
Franklin Reserve resident Susan McDonald claimed that 2 of the homes on her area were actually turned into indoor marijuana operations utolizing greenhouses, and each of them caught fire last year after the growers tapped into the city’s electric grid with bad wiring.
Pretty outragious is it not?
But she lightheartedly jokes that they make better neighbors than some.
“There’s been gang activity. Things have really been changing the last few years.”
Crime reports in Franklin Reserve rose by almost half percent in May, to 100 from 69 in the same month last year if you can believe that huge increase.
To deter crime, the community policing unit is charged with working with code enforcement officers on problems such as unkempt homes and patrol officers swing past vacant homes as part of their normal duties. But there has been no increase in police budget, overtime or staff as a result of the empty homes.
In the meantime community members are trying to make do. Last month, for instance, 24 church members gathered their lawn mowers and weed trimmers and cleaned up some twenty-seven vacant lawns.
In a recent article in the San Jose Mercury news it was reported that the California Governor and also the
Attorney General have sued the Federal Government so as to permit the state to set a substantially toupher tailpipe emission standard than the the Feds would like and in the process might
have given rise to a strange political alliance.
Essentially, the state’s lawsuit is seeking permission to impose toupher standards, beginning two years from now, on vehicle emissions which are contributing to the global warming problem.
“We’re taking another big step forward in battling against global warming,” said the Governor.
Schwarzenegger has made major headlines for his efforts to increased regulations to reduce emissions.
At Thursday’s Capitol news conference, he and Attorney General Brown were both present.
The governor stated that he and the AG were “going to continue working on this together”……
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meanwhile, Representative Jerry McNerney, a Democrat from Pleasanton, stated he emphasized, saying “the EPA has dragged its feet for far too long.”
The goal of the golden State’s 2003 law - lowering the harmful emissions from motor vehicles by some 1/3 from 2009 to 2016 - is a piece of the State’s actions to lower global warming.
To implement the standards, the state needs a waiver from none other than the EPA
With thirty two odd million registered motor vehicles in the Golden State, it is estimated that the emission goal in question would be about lie taking 6.5 million motor vehicles off the road by the year 2020.
Various relevent officials still maintain that automakers could offer better motor vehicles by perhaps 2009, if the EPA grants the waiver requested in the past.
For their part, they have already granted many such waivers in the past they have stated that they have plans to act on this particular request by the end of 2007.
well, try not to be in too much of a hurry guys, it’s only the future of the planet that apparently hangs in the balance, lol.
The state’s lawsuit is in fact just one facet of a much larger legal battle.
Motor vehicle manufacturers have long since sued to overturn the 2003 law, citing the severe costs involved.
In the meantime, representatives of environmental groups recently stated that if the EPA refuses to comply with California’s new lawsuit and denies the waiver request, they also will file a lawsuit, according to the San Jose mercury news report.
One relevent Poll appears to indicate that state residents believe the problem is indeed very critical.
All in all, 43% of the poll respondents believe that global warming need timely action and 32% think that something must be done.
There will be a lot more legal news on this one coming out soon.
A recent article in the San Jose Mercury online News has reported that narcotic use by motorists
is being put under more of a microscope, with brand new
legislation announced yesterday that would stop drivers with any detectable amounts of various illegal narcotics like cocaine or heroin from operating a motor vehicle vehicle.
This seems like a no-brainer to me since drivers have long faced having the book thrown at them for driving while drinking. The glaring absence of a counterpart law for driving under the influence of narcotics has always seemed odd to me.
I mean, you throw someone in the slammer because they were on their way back from their parents house on thanksgiving after taking one sip too many but
the crack-head recklessly swerving along somehow get’s a free pass?
In any case, Assemblyman John Benoit is trying to stop all of that.
Under the law as it stands now, drivers suspected of being under the influence of banned narcotics may be arrested. However, successful prosecution is apparently not very easy since most jurors are used to a numerical standard such as the blood-alcohol level to determine the particular level of impairment.
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At this time it is not fully known just how many such motorists get away with these crimes in California. However, a Maryland research study has cited that there, driver injuries in crashes which involved narcotics were caused by drivers who were high almost two times as much as often as those who were drinking.
The proposed California law, AB 1215, requests the Legislature to set numerical values based on blood & urine analysis to judge just how buzzed a motorist is. Yet after a hearing by the Assembly Public Safety Committee after the news conference, it
was stated by the assemblyman that a rather draconian “zero-tolerance” law was instead being considered. Very harsh indeed but probably needed in this case, in my
humble opinion.
According to an excellent article by Henry Weinstein of the Los Angeles Times newspaper,
one of California’s biggest law companies has filed a civil case with the goal of putting a supposedly phony
legal-aid outfit out of business in Northern California. Law researchers have stated that this lawsuit is attempting to address a growing problem
in the Golden State. This particular lawsuit was filed in the Contra Costa County Superior Court last week, and claims the Legal Center for Legal Aid has cheated
state citizens who were seeking help with evictions. They claim that they
used fake advertising in a “brazen . . . scam” to cheat some 4 individuals, including a blind man senior citizen, a double amputee and even a plaintiff with an extreme head injury.
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They gave no help (or at least very bad help) to those aforementioned victims and unbelievably, still use fake advertising and promotional methods, according to the lawsuit in question.
This supposedly fradulent company advertises in several California Yellow Page directories and their Yellow Page entry was in close proximity to the honest legal aid outfits thus going the extra mile to decieve their victims, according to the report.
Furthermore, this particular lawsuit accuses them of unlawful practice of law, false advertising, professional negligence, fraud and several other very serious charges. Man, do these guys have no scruples or what?
Talk about a major lack of ethics and moral standards. In any event, this troubling situation was described as a “very common problem,”. Unfortunatel, it also appears to be increasing substantially, according to the los Angeles Times article.
For example, the California Law Clinic, which is a Los Angeles-based company, was sued about 4 years ago or so for misrepresenting itself as a public interest organization. This particular
“clinic” operated under a number of different names such as Legal Aid Crenshaw and Legal Aid Compton, in areas where they have Law offices. Very sneaky methods at work here.
Fortunately, however, two years ago a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge issued an injunction against this apparently crooked outfit.
It was ruled that they had engaged in phony and misleading advertising and promotional methods as well as unfair competition to willfully infringe the trademark that the Legal Aid Foundation had.
In the end, the judge in the case awarded one and a half million dollars in damages. Yet those damages have yet to be collected, sadly enouph.
According to an article posted in the Vancouver Sun Newspaper, a ten-year
old boy has allegedly admitted to igniting one of the biggest of the wildfires to strike California, officials have stated.
He apparently told them it was an accident. The fire in question, known as the Buckweed fire, began on October 21, in Agua Dulce, which is a rural area in LA County.
Fanned by the intense winds and very dry weather, it spread fast, forcing some fifteen thousand individuals from their houses and wiping out twenty-one
houses and twenty-two other structures while injuring 3 individuals to boot. All in a day’s work for this kid I suppose. In the meantime
investigators from the LA County Sheriff’s Department spoke with the child, and he eventually “acknowledged that he was playing with matches and accidentally, his words, set the fire.”
For the time being the boy is in the custody of his mother and father while waiting to find out whether or not he would be prosecuted.
Incidentially if you happen to be in the lake arrowhead area and were affected by the wildfires you should take a look at
lake arrowhead disaster reconstruction for help.
If the answer is in the affirmative he will apparently be tried in the juvenile justice system and will not be tried as an adult. As of today it was not known
whether or not his parents would be held responsible for monetary damages that were caused by the fires. As of today these particular fires have been contained completely.
At least that is good news. In the meantime junior has started to play with his new woodburner kit. Just kidding. In addition to the kid,
some adult arson suspects have likewise been apprehended in the 7-odd counties affected by the wildfires. As if all of this was not bad enouph, USA today has reported that
big wildfires such as the ones that have been scorching California recently substantially boost carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. According to the report,
can actually give off as much carbon dioxide as vehicles in certain American states. Under usual circumstances, carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires are about five percent
of the man-made total in the country. But during the major fires, the proportion of fire contributions to carbon-dioxide emissions can increase dramatically, according to the study.
