Worcester Foreclosure Problem Not Limited To Homeowners Losing Roof Over Their Head

In Massachusetts, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette News reports:

• [E]arlier this year, police Capt. Paul B. Saucier pointed out, police inside a vacant foreclosed home discovered that the copper fittings to a natural gas line had been removed. The slightest jarring of the gas line, which hadn’t been shut off, and exposure to flame could have sparked a major explosion.

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• There have been instances, Capt. Saucier said, of people found using drugs inside vacant foreclosed properties, but not to the extent the site could be considered a “drug den” where users frequently congregate. Where police have seen a sharp increase, the captain said, are thefts and vandalism at vacant foreclosed properties, particularly theft of copper pipe and fittings. The price of the metal, which can be sold at scrap yards, has risen from 65 cents a pound in 2002 to about $3 a pound today. The average home contains about $300 worth of copper pipe and fittings. Capt. Saucier noted a March 27 call police received from the real estate agent for a foreclosed house at 324 Millbury St. The agent said the house had been broken into and all copper pipe had been ripped out and removed.

• William T. Breault, chairman of the Main South Alliance for Public Safety, said the situation was painfully apparent at a foreclosed and vacant house at 1 Cheney St. in the Main South district. For several months, he said, the door locks remained broken and people were going in and out of the dwelling at all hours. Inside were mattresses and considerable trash. All the copper in the home had been stripped, although the gas hadn’t been shut off. The windows and doors were boarded shut earlier this year and vagrants seem to have stopped coming by. “That’s happening all over the place,” Mr. Breault said.

For the story, see Houses of cards. neighborhood destruction from foreclosures zach copper metal theft yak