This video report is from our Southern California KCET’s SoCal Local Connected blog.  It pointedly illustrates the impact of the foreclosures affecting our Southern California’s Inland Empire community. 

“Foreclosure is becoming a way of life in California with repossessed homes now dominating the real estate market.  One in every two homes sold last month in Southern California had been repossessed,” host Val Zavala recites in the story’s introduction. “Or to look at it another way, 700 families lose their homes every day.  One of the hardest hit areas is the Inland Empire.”

The story begins with a crew that removes everything left behind in recently foreclosed homes.  Families whose dreams of home ownership have become a nightmare leave behind pieces of that dream, including big-screen televisions, computers, furnishings, clothes, toys and family photos. The owner of the company that does these Trash Outs, as they have come to be known, says he has found everything from birth certificates to an urn with someone’s remains in homes that his company has Trashed Out.

The business owner says his business has grown from three employees a few years ago to 73 employees today; His company now cleans out an average of 15 foreclosed homes a day. He say he tries to donate things of value, but has trouble coordinating the donations and since he cannot leave anything behind, even valuable items often get thrown away.

The video also touches on a new practice of spray painting brown lawns green outside foreclosed houses, a family that is the lone holdout on a suburban cul de sac filled with Foreclosures and Short Sales, and finally two code enforcement officers who drain an abandoned pool of stagnant green water to discourage it from becoming an issue for mosquito breeding and West Nile virus.