hot topic | HOUSING WOES PREVENTING FORECLOSURE COMMERCE CITY, COLO.—A homeowner listens during a foreclosure prevention workshop held by the Adams County Housing Authority in Commerce City, Colo. The county, which has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the state, puts on several workshops a month to help residents learn ways to avoid foreclosure. Colorado operates a Foreclosure Hotline to connect borrowers with nonprofits like this one, who can provide information on a borrower’s options when facing foreclosure. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images
AS FORECLOSURE CRISIS RAGES ON, STATES HELP HOMEOWNERS
CAPITOL IDEAS
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MARCH/APRIL 2010
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by Tim Weldon
No state has felt the foreclosure crisis as acutely as Nevada. “We describe Nevada as ‘Ground Zero’ for the foreclosure epidemic,” House Speaker Barbara Buckley said. “Especially in Clark County (home to Las Vegas) you cannot drive through a neighborhood without seeing three or four foreclosed homes on a block.” Nevada led the nation in the rate of foreclosures for the third year in a row in 2009. But it was bad across the country and the foreclosure crisis isn’t over yet. Foreclosure filings increased by 21 percent in 2009 over 2008,
according to RealtyTrac, a real estate data service that tracks foreclosures. Owners of 2.8 million properties nationally received foreclosure notices last year. In Nevada and across the country, state officials are responding—trying to keep people in their homes and foreclosures from further wrecking the economy. Buckley is frank about the impact of foreclosures: “It was and is impacting our economy, and it was just a spiraling effect that had to be addressed,” she said. She responded to the foreclosure crisis with Assembly Bill 149, which the legislature approved and Gov. Jim
