Foreclosure crisis has ripple effect

more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-11-foreclosures_N.htm

Foreclosure crisis has ripple effect

Posted 12h 50m ago |Spike in home foreclosures:

"For sale" signs dot properties along Catanzaro Way in Antioch, Calif., last October.

Source: National League of Cities' Insta-Poll of 1,240 local officials, based on 211 responses

Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

The mortgage foreclosure crisis has caused a drop in cities' revenues, a spike in crime, more homelessness and an increase in vacant properties, a survey of elected local officials out today shows.
About two-thirds of 211 officials surveyed by the National League of Cities reported an increase in foreclosures in their cities in the past year, according to the online and e-mail questionnaire. A third of them reported a drop in revenues and an increase in abandoned and vacant properties and urban blight.

SURRENDER: Mortgage lenders see more borrowers give up

"There's a reduction in revenues at the same time that more services are needed," says Cynthia McCollum, president of the National League of Cities and councilwoman in Madison, Ala., a suburb of Huntsville. "Because of foreclosures, people are stealing, crime is on the rise and we don't have more money for cops on the street."