California Legislature Nixes Proposed Foreclosure Bill

In California, The Associated Press reports:

• California's state senate narrowly defeated a bill Wednesday that targeted the growing problem of foreclosed homes sitting vacant for months, drawing squatters and creating blight. Lenders would have been fined $1,000 a day for not maintaining vacant properties, and they would have had to give four months' notice before mortgage payment increases of 10 percent or more. "The purpose of this bill is very simple: to keep people in their homes," said the bill's sponsor, Don Perata, a Democrat from Oakland and the Senate leader.

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• Thieves have looted empty homes, stripping them of electrical appliances or valuable copper wiring and pipes that can be sold as scrap. In Sacramento last month, one household was robbed in the midst of moving out of a foreclosed property.

For more, see California Foreclosure Bill Fails.