Atrios: Stealing homes, then destroying them and their communities

he's referring to this...

Across the country, big banks and other large investors are buying up tens of thousands of foreclosed rental properties. They're not always model landlords, according to tenants and regulators. Some banks are failing to follow local and state housing codes, leaving tenants to live in squalor — without even a number to call in the most dire situations.

[...]

That's difficult even when there is a property manager. Luz Escamilla in Hyattsville, Md., says she sleeps with the lights on, "waiting for the bugs to come up." Her place is infested. There are chocolate-colored blotches all over her walls; it's the blood of bedbugs she has killed. [Note: the blood isn't "the blood of bedbugs," it's the blood of Luz Escamilla that has been ingested by the bedbugs.]

[...]

[Anne] Norton, the Maryland bank regulator, says it's often more challenging to take a bank to court than a mom-and-pop landlord.

"Due to disproportional bargaining rights between tenants and the parties that are the investors, tenants feel that they don't have a voice and also don't have rights," Norton says.

States are at a loss, too. They aren't sure how to make banks comply with their housing codes. Norton and nine other regulators are now drafting guidelines to help states crack down.

i find it downright amazing how rapidly the u.s. is making the descent to the status of 3d world country...

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