March 4th, 2009 by Reed Allmand 
According to an article in the Star-Telegram, Port St. Lucie, Florida is considering declaring itself a disaster area because of destruction caused by massive, uncontrolled foreclosures in the county. Could Dallas-Fort Worth be the country’s next foreclosures disaster zone?
The article said:
Just five years ago, Port St. Lucie was America’s fastest-growing large city. Then the foreclosure crisis slammed it like a hurricane. Today it sits in one of the hardest-hit counties in the nation. Thousands of houses are empty or unfinished. Neighborhoods are littered with for-sale and foreclosure signs and overgrown, neglected yards. Break-ins are on the rise.
Sound familiar? Dallas-Fort Worth benefited greatly from the housing boom, rising employment, booming population, flourishing businesses and now we are being slapped with a record number of foreclosures. On this blog we’ve already reported how some commercial real estate projects are going unfinished and how many retail office spaces sit empty. How far are we from being the next victim of a foreclosure tsunami? Well, if the numbers are right, the indicators point to sometime in the near future. But it is not simply destined; there are actions that we (our government) can take to stop the pain. Doug Coward says it best…
“This is a manmade disaster,” County Commissioner Doug Coward acknowledged. But he said that is why “we’ve got to do something. Clearly, the economic crisis of the country far exceeds the ability of local governments to solve it, but we’re trying be a part of the solution.”
This foreclosure disaster is a manmade one; but more specifically one created by an overzealous financial industry that pushed the toxic mortgages that are the eye of this foreclosure storm. What we need to do now is to make changes so that those toxic mortgages can be modified in bankruptcy helping homeowners save their homes from foreclosure.
About Reed Allmand
Allmand's vision is rooted in his own financially precarious childhood in Abilene "My father always had difficulty holding a job and supporting our family, so after my parents divorced when I was 12, my sister and I got jobs to help make ends meet," he recalls. "I remember what it felt like as a child to worry that our car would be repossessed or home foreclosed on."
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