Owners Ditch Pets After Houses Foreclose

ABC News:

The house was ravaged -- its floors ripped, walls busted and lights smashed by owners who trashed their home before a bank foreclosed on it. Hidden in the wreckage was an abandoned member of the family: a starving pit bull.

The dog found by workers was too far gone to save -- another example of how pets are becoming the newest victims of the nation's mortgage crisis as homeowners leave animals behind when they can no longer afford their property.

Pets "are getting dumped all over," said Traci Jennings, president of the Humane Society of Stanislaus County in northern California. "Farmers are finding dogs dumped on their grazing grounds, while house cats are showing up in wild cat colonies."

Read the whole story: ABC News

Comments

[CanCar]

But, why not to give it in an animal shelter?There are hundreds of organizations who are dedicated to take care of the animals when the owners cannot do it. humanesocietywi. info

[SaintN]

Renting a house or an apartment is a "Scam"!

After 25 or 30 years of paying rent you have absolutely no equity in your abode,you own neither a wall,a floor or even a single tile or a nail.If you had spent that 25-30 years of rent money towards buying a house or a condo you'd own it or most of it plus you could sell it and get at least some of your investment back.Renting is never a good,long term deal except for the landlords.­Unfortunat­ely a lot of people can't get a fair deal in a home loan plus the corporate real estate companies have monopolized the housing business and jacked the prices up as far as they could.

[westview]

There is a simple answer to this. It is time to wake up to the needs of families and their animals and make it illegal to have rental housing that bans pets. Federal laws already extend some protections to the elderly and to handicapped pet owners. This should be a protection all persons can expect. Not being able to take an animal when a person moves is one of the top reasons for pets turned into rescue and shelters, now apparently also for desertion. Pet ownership reduces mental and physical health costs in our society, improves our empathy with one another and extends our lives. People should not be put in the terrible position of lying about their animals, placing them, or deserting them.

[SaintN]

So whats the underlying expectation here? That evicted homeowners should have more morality and ethics than America's cut_throat banks and lending institutions?

[fact finder]

AS usual those who can not help them selves get screwed. The owner of the dog should suffer the same fate.

[WIpatriot]

How you treat your pet is how you deserve to be treated.

[wagadog]

You know most of the comments on this -- in the ABC column -- focus on the Popular Narrative (tm) that "these people bought houses they couldn't afford, so of course they have pets they couldn't take care of."

Let's back up a minute. Do we really know WHY there are so many foreclosures? Has there been a sudden outbreak of "immaturity and irresponsibility" in homebuyers?

Or does it have more to do with union-busting, shipping jobs overseas, rising cost of living and hmm...health insurance companies run amok with denying people coverage on procedures that are, well, just enough to bankrupt anyone. But nobody can obtain bankruptcy protection from their creditors anymore.

And what happens to the family home of a military service member (or contractor) when he or she returns from Iraq mentally and/or physically disabled, with the VA jerking everyone around and getting their own funding cut left and right?

Are those losses being included in the TRILLIONS of dollars lost on a pointless, illegal war of aggression? Probably not. But they are losses none the less.

Oh, and cutbacks for health and human services funding of all types? Necessary cutbacks TO PAY FOR THE WAR? After Clinton gutted welfare.

It absolutely boggles the mind, that with all of the economic pressures put on people over the past 15 years that THE ONLY people at fault for this catastrophe are ITS VICTIMS.

Why is this popular narrative of failed individual responsibility being repeated over and over?

The pressures on working families have just been multiplied over and over and over by both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

I feel as sorry for the foreclosed homeowners as I do for their dogs and cats -- and I hold George Bush and Bill Clinton personally responsible.

This victim-blaming popular narrative has got to be challenged.

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Now it is serious. If this housing market was affecting only people I'm alright with that. But the moment it starts affecting pets, something needs to be done and it needs to be done now!!!