Banks as slumlords

— By Kevin Drum| Fri May. 6, 2011 3:00 AM PDT
A couple of days ago the Los Angeles city attorney's office sued Deutsche Bank. Why? Because it's a slumlord:

The Frankfurt, Germany-based bank has foreclosed on more than 2,000 homes over the last four years in neighborhoods across the city, according to the suit — many concentrated in the northeast San Fernando Valley, northeast Los Angeles and South Los Angeles.

Los Angeles officials say the bank has been a dreadful landlord and neighbor. Prosecutors say that during a yearlong investigation, they found evidence that Deutsche Bank had illegally evicted some tenants, let others live in squalor and allowed hundreds of unoccupied properties to turn into graffiti-scarred dens for squatters, gang members and other criminals.

Deutsche Bank, unsurprisingly, is passing the buck: they say the party responsible for keeping up foreclosed houses is the loan servicer, not the bank. But loan servicers, who make their money from the fees they collect during the foreclosure process, are notoriously unwilling to spend money once the foreclosure is finished, and they're also notoriously hard to prosecute. So Los Angeles is trying a different tack: holding the ultimate owner of the property—Deutsche Bank, in this case—responsible for the condition of their property. They're the ones who hired the slumlord, after all.

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http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/05/deutsche-bank-foreclosure