Mortgage Crisis Leads to Abandoned Homes, Employment Cuts

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• JIM LEHRER:

  Now, the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis beyond the housing market. NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles reports from Hemet, California.

• JEFFREY KAYE, NewsHour Correspondent:

  In the southern California city of Hemet, 90 miles east of Los Angeles, the real estate mortgage crisis has turned into a public health problem.

  LOU JUAREZ, Riverside County, Department of Environmental Health: We're at the early stages of larvae.

• JEFFREY KAYE:

  Mosquitoes are breeding in the backyard pools of abandoned homes. The insects can carry diseases. With home foreclosures in Hemet soaring, the number of neglected swimming pools is on the rise.

• LOU JUAREZ:

  The public health hazard would be West Nile virus, which can be very fatal.

• JEFFREY KAYE:

  Mosquito control technician Lou Juarez works for Riverside County, inspecting and fumigating so-called "green pools." He says his workload has doubled over the past year.

• LOU JUAREZ:

  We have a tendency of receiving probably three or four complaints on a daily basis. At times, you don't know, you know, who the property owner is anymore, because he has vacated the premises. The bank has now taken — there's been a foreclosure on it. Our intention is to go in as quickly as possible and as soon as possible so we could avoid any potential health hazards.

• JEFFREY KAYE:

  Besides the green pools, the color of the mortgage crisis in Hemet is brown. Dying front lawns and "For Sale" signs make foreclosed homes easy to spot. Some remaining residents of Hemet's many housing tracts say their neighborhoods are starting to feel like suburban ghost towns.

• MICHELLE HOLSHOUSER, Resident, Hemet:

  It's becoming barren. Everybody is leaving. I think this house was empty for about eight months, and then somebody moved in. They're getting ready to leave. The house across the street was empty, and they moved in for about, I would say, eight months and left.

• JACQUI YUNGEN, Resident, Hemet:

  Now you've got people who know that these houses are vacant that are coming around and they're jumping in the pools, they're going into the houses. We have 11 houses right around on this one block that are all vacant.