LA may fine banks that don't maintain foreclosed properties

The Los Angeles City Council Friday considers a proposal that would create a registry of foreclosed homes — and would levy fines on banks that don’t maintain them.

A spokesman for City Council President Eric Garcetti says about 25,000 L.A. homes are in foreclosure.

Spokesman Yusef Robb says the city’s received complaints on nearly 800 of them — yards strewn with trash and overgrown weeds, unsecured buildings that become hangouts for teenagers and vagrants.

Under the proposed ordinance, the city would begin a registry of these properties and the financial institutions that own them. L.A. would fine those banks $1,000 a day for each violation of building and safety regulations, up to $100,000 a year.

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Several neighborhood groups support the ordinance.

So does the head of the city council’s budget committee. The council hopes to raise $5 million in fines from the program, and prevent some of the 1,000 city layoffs planned for October.

Those 1,000 layoffs are in addition to the 761 planned for beginning July 1. The city hopes to avoid the extra layoffs with money from privatized parking structures, an increase in documentary taxes, and the foreclosure program.