Nothing But Shattered Dreams

From the Lodi News-Sentinel:

John Smith [Name Changed by Request] says he was duped. The 31-year-old Galt native thought he was buying into a dream when he and his wife purchased their home at The Villas of Lodi in November 2005.
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Yet as soon as Smith moved in, his dream and his neighborhood began to crumble. The homes that had been snatched up so quickly at the peak of the housing boom sat empty for months at a time, with their owners nowhere to be found.

Green lawns turned to brown, left unkempt in the hot spring and summer months. Tall weeds began to sprout in place of neatly landscaped front gardens. "For sale" signs popped up throughout the neighborhood, replaced later by "for rent" signs. Pigeons began to roost on top of abandoned homes, leaving a mess below.

Smith's vision of a vibrant community of homeowners — as promised by builder KB Home — vanished. "There's just not a lot of homeowners here," he said this week, noting that his neighbors now consist of renters, from a trio of exotic dancers next door to a group of five young men nearby who throw loud parties late into the night.
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Smith and a few of his neighbors acknowledge that they bought their homes at the worst time possible. (Home prices have slumped since 2005).

But they also contend that KB Home misled them about what kind of community they were moving into — a now blighted neighborhood they say threatens to drag their home values even further down. They say the home-building giant promised to not sell to out-of-town investors — people who likely would not live in the homes or take close care of them...Reached for comment this week, a KB Home spokesman said his company can't always control who moves into one of their communities.
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The Villas are not the only community in the region that has seen out-of-town investors buy and then abandon homes, due to the sluggish market. "For sale" signs dot many Lodi and Stockton neighborhoods. And foreclosure rates in San Joaquin County are the highest in the nation, according to RealtyTrac, which publishes a nationwide list of foreclosed properties. As of this week, there were 1,952 homes in foreclosure in the county, according to Web site.
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The experience has frustrated Smith along with neighbors Christine and Darin Parvin to no end. The three feel stuck in the neighborhood, unable to make a return on their homes because of the slumping market, but also because any potential buyer would be turned off by the blighted homes that surround them.

"I'm so mad. I'm just mad," Smith said, standing next to his dining room table covered with stacks of e-mail copies and letters he's written to KB Home, the city of Lodi and print-outs on the region's housing market. "My property value has dumped ... I've got the worst of both worlds," he said.
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Smith, a clean shaven man with short brown hair and an intense stare, is now separated from his wife, at least partly because of the ordeal at The Villas. He said he wants to leave the city, his neighborhood and shattered dream behind. "I want to say I really like Lodi," he said, standing at the end of Tuscolana Way, where he estimated more than half the homes are for sale, in foreclosure or being rented. "(But) there's no charm out here."
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Some conditions at The Villas have gotten so bad that John Smith has taken to manually turning on his neighbors' sprinkler systems to water burned-up lawns. He and neighbors Christine and Darin Parvin say they have little choice but to take matters into their own hands, literally.
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They, like Smith, feel misled by KB Home and are ready to leave Lodi. "In Lodi, you expect a community to serve the small town feel," Christine Parvin said. "But after you move in here, you find out the neighborhood is 80 percent Bay Area investors."
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Mandy Joachim said she's been hit by three burglaries since she moved in, two to her car and one to her garage...and worries more crime could come to the neighborhood. "I think a lot of it has to do with the empty houses," she said, standing in front of her home this week.

From CBS 13 (also video):

Denise Turner looks through her fence in disgust. “It's completely green and brown, like a swamp,” said Turner. She says she has noticed more homes like this throughout her Elk Grove neighborhood and she is blaming the recent increase in home foreclosures. “There's got to be more than one home around here that has pools that are like that,” said Turner.

Turner says she's worried about the mosquitoes lurking nearby when she's hanging out with her family around her pool so she called the mosquito vector control. “They said they'd been inundated with phone calls about abandoned pools,” said Turner.

From ABC 30:

The Atwater Fire Department typically gets triple its average number of calls on the Fourth of July, and this year officials have a new concern. Abandoned houses pose a serious fire danger with dry grass and dead shrubs. That's why city officials are taking steps now to minimize the risk as the 4th of July approaches.
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Fire Chief Ed Banks and Mayor Joan Faul are especially concerned this year because of the number of abandoned homes with dead, dry lawns. Like many Valley cities, foreclosures in Atwater are on the rise. The people who moved out left bone dry lawns behind, creating a major fire hazard.
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The Fire Department has been contacting property owners and realtors to have the lawns tended to before the fourth of July. But in some cases no one is taking responsibility.

Chief Banks says, "We may have to take matters into our own hands. It may come to the point where we have to hire a contractor to take care of the problem."