Streetlights To Entire Subdivision Shut Off For Failure To Pay Electric Bill; Lower Maintenance Fee Collections Leaves HOA Low On Cash, High On Crime

In Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, The Charlotte Observer reports:

• Streetlights have been dark for months in Hathaway Hills, a 4-year-old subdivision in west Mecklenburg County. But it took a tragedy to highlight the problem's urgency. When Louis Navarre was shot to death in his home Jan. 2, the killers escaped by running down the pitch-dark streets.

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• Duke Energy cut the lights off in October, after the homeowners association stopped paying the electricity bill. The darkness has encouraged home burglaries and car break-ins, residents said. It has alarmed parents whose children wait for the school bus before dawn. It's also a sign of Mecklenburg County's foreclosure crisis. “It's one of the little things that can cause a major problem,” said Mayor Pat McCrory. “It shows the foreclosure situation has an impact on other things that most people wouldn't think of.”

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• The [foreclosing] banks do not pay homeowner dues, and often absentee landlords don't either, property management officials say, so basic services start to go, including lighting, landscaping and security patrols.

For more, see What happens when the lights go out (Hathaway Hills can't afford to keep the streetlights on. In the dark, there have been more break-ins. Now a neighbor is dead).