Vacant foreclosed homes are still wreaking havoc in some neighborhoods across the country, creating eyesores and pulling down overall home prices.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers from Ohio and Michigan, seeking to revitalize these devastated communities, recently announced that in two weeks it plans to introduce a bill to Congress that would allow government bonds to be issued for tearing down dilapidated foreclosures, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. The coalition says the group still needs to work out more details of the nationwide program it wants to propose. As part of the program, states would receive funding to help offset the costs of tearing down the foreclosures, with some of the hardest-hit states in the foreclosure crisis receiving extra.

Ohio and Michigan already have separate initiatives under way to help deal with the high number of abandoned homes that line some of their cities’ streets. For example, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine recently said $75 million of Ohio’s $335 million share from a recent $26 billion settlement with the nation’s largest mortgage lenders will go to demolishing abandoned homes. Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County alone, for instance, has 27,000 vacant homes that are believed to be beyond repair, lawmakers note. 

Several banks also have been donating some of their foreclosed home inventory to cities as well as contributing to the demolition costs. 

“There is way too much supply,” Gus Frangos, president of the Cleveland-based Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corp., told Bloomberg News back in July. “The best thing we can do to stabilize the market is to get the garbage off.”

Source: “Bill WIll Propose Funding Foreclosure Teardowns With Government Bonds,” Cleveland Plain Dealer (Feb. 17, 2012) and REALTOR® Magazine Daily News

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