Where Cleveland went wrong--CNN won't blame Taft &the gops who overturned protections

[Kolesar]

Complete with imagery of city folks refinancing to buy a luxury car.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/12/real_estate/Cleveland_foreclosure_factors/index.htm?cnn=yes


CLEVELAND (CNNMoney.com) -- As the Treasurer of Cuyahoga County in Ohio, Jim Rokakis spends a lot of his time trying to deal with Cleveland's foreclosure crisis.

When asked recently just how bad it is, Rokakis unfurled a six-foot by four-foot Cleveland city plot map. Each lot was covered with dots of red ink where foreclosed homes filled the plots. From a few feet away, the map looked heavily freckled, while some neighborhoods nearly melted together in crimson masses.

Foreclosures hit Cleveland early and hard. By the summer of 2007, it had four of the top 21 ZIP codes for foreclosure filings in the United States. According to RealtyTrac, the city's 44105 ZIP, known as the Slavic Village, was the hardest hit U.S. community with 783 filings.

What made Cleveland the nation's foreclosure epicenter?

Like most rust-belt cities, it's suffered serious economic setbacks. The city lost jobs at more than three times the national rate during 2001 through 2003 and has not had a meaningful recovery since, according to Richard DeKaser, chief economist at Cleveland-based mortgage lender National City Corp. The state of Ohio recorded a quarter of all U.S. manufacturing job losses since 2001.

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Still, Rokakis and others don't buy the "It's the economy, stupid," explanation.

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The state legislature was dominated by banking interests."

Cleveland tried to enact local anti-predatory lending ordinances in 2002, but national lenders then abandoned the market, according to Mark Wiseman, who heads the Cuyahoga County Foreclosure Prevention Program, which is part of the county treasurer's office.

One bank representative, speaking under condition of anonymity, said the ordinances would have put local lending criteria well above and beyond the national standards. The lenders wanted no part of that.

Wiseman said banking lobbyists got the state legislature to nullify the local ordinances. Until this year, Ohio was one of only two states that did not include mortgage borrowers in their consumer protection statutes. And when the state passed anti-predatory lending laws in 2006, the punitive damages part of the law was gutted during the lame duck legislative session at the end the year.
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