Mayors face test of spreading foreclosures*
source http://features.us.reuters.com
By Martha Graybow
TRENTON, New Jersey (Reuters) - Mayor Douglas Palmer, meeting with
visitors at City Hall, points to a large map peppered with dark dots.
Each one represents a home or group of homes ..............
In Trenton, Palmer has focused for years on creating affordable
housing for middle-income people, including a collection of attractive
row houses in a once-downtrodden area known as the Battle Monument
district.
The mayor fears that even neighborhoods like this one, where mortgages are mostly strong, will suffer as foreclosures rise, homes are shuttered, crime festers and property values fall. Police have reported a rise in copper pipe thefts around the city, for example, as vandals strip unoccupied homes, Palmer said. "This cuts across every area of our economy, of the services we'll have to provide," Palmer said. When homes are boarded up, neighbors complain of blight such as piles of trash and overgrown grass, he said. "Who's going to cut it? The city will have to."
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