Home foreclosure is rampant in the United States. According to the Associated Press, Las Vegas was at the top of the list again.
David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard and Poor’s/Case-Shiller’s United State’s National Home Price Indextold the AP, “Seventeen of the [20] metro areas the index tracks reported record annual declines led again by Miami and Las Vegas.” According to Realty Trac Inc., “one in every 54 Nevada households received a foreclosure filing during the first quarter [of 2008], 3.6 percent above the national average and up 137 percent from the first quarter of 2007.” The phenomenon has become so tremendous in the Clark County area that John and Ruth Ahlbrand, local realtors and co-founders of, Re/Max Central have begun offering bus tours of foreclosure properties to prospective buyers in the Las Vegas area.
Dan Schultz, operator of American Loss Mitigation Inc., specializes in helping people avoid home foreclosure. He says that foreclosure can mean so much more than just losing a home. Men and women in this situation face loss of equity, lawsuits, credit troubles, increased taxes, job loss and loss of self-esteem and self worth which can lead to depression and other mental health issues. These problems mount into larger issues that effect the entire nation. According to Haya El Nasser, a columnist at USA Today, the foreclosure crisis in the U.S. has “caused a drop in cities’ revenues, a spike in crime, more homelessness, and an increase in vacant properties,” which is according to a national survey of elected officials published by The National League of Cities in March.
One thing these organizations have yet to recognize: the effect this crisis is having on the four-legged population of the U.S.
One of the first publications to nationally address foreclosure pets was Business Week. In a June 2007 article by Maya Roney tells the story of animal rescue worker Gail Silver and her first encounter with animals, cats in this case, abandoned in a foreclosed home.
See a photo slide show with highlights from Roney’s article.
In January 2008 the Associated Press made the problem even more national with a story picked up by papers across the country. The author, Evelyn Nieves, brought the term ‘foreclosure pets’ to America’s front pages. Other, smaller publications followed, focusing their reporting on the impact of smaller and even rural communities.
The story remained untouched in Las Vegas or Nevada until March 2008 when a Las Vegas Review Journal reporter, Sonya Padgett wrote her article, “Overwhelming Situation: Innocent Victims” focusing on the problem throughout Clark County. Through her reporting, suddenly it seemed like the skyrocketing foreclosure numbers in Las Vegas were connecting to the foreclosure pet phenomenon. Shelters reported to Padgett that their numbers had jumped and one local realtor, Linda Pelaez, recognized that abandoned animals in the foreclosed properties she inspected were quite common.
But exactly how common is it here in the Vegas valley?
D.J. Cotswell, self-proclaimed ‘pencil pusher’ at the Nevada Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, says its very common but hard to nail down specifically. “Unfortunately most of the time we can’t get accurate statistics because there is no one to ask or people don’t want to give us their names. Or, they say, ‘oh, its not my dog, I found it’ so we can’t say for sure. We ask, but they won’t always say.” According to Padgett’s article, the SPCA’s Executive Director Doug Duke reported that he estimated about 150 animals a week come to them due to a foreclosure. Cotswell thought that estimate was probably pretty accurate. “It seems like it went from, sort of like, 50 a day to over 100 a day overnight, ” he says.
Lied Animal Shelter, the city’s main shelter and Clark County Animal Control say they are seeing a different trends. According to Darin Landrum, Lied’s Director of Operations, their numbers have stayed steady since the mortgage crisis hit the country. David March, Animal Control Supervisor for Clark County says his numbers have actually gone down in the last year. They impounded 929 animals in March of 2008 compared with 985 in March of 2007. March does say, however, “We don’t collect specific information concerning the source of an abandoned animal. It’s not generally obvious that a home has been foreclosed when we arrive to remove an abandoned animal.”
When animal control picks up a wayward animal they take it immediately to Lied. Lied practices euthanization on animals that cannot or will not be adopted. Shelters like the one operated by the SPCA are no-kill facilities. Typically, people want to help the animals they find or have to surrender and avoid contacting shelters that may eventually put them down. This is part of, Cotswell feels, the reason for this contradiction in reporting numbers. “We get as much information as we can on the animals we take in; Lied may not because of the way they get them. I try to never turn an animal away, either, but I’m almost to capacity right now. If things don’t turn around soon, more and more animals are likely to turn up on the street and that may cause Lied’s numbers to rise.”
The Nevada SPCA is well aware of the problem and addressed their concerns on page two of their spring, 2008 newsletter, ”Paws Pause,” directly,
“The home foreclosure crisis has strained our volunteer and staff resources, coming in the midst of what is already southern Nevada’s most severe animal overpopulation crisis. But we have been in overdrive rescuing the often physically and emotionally injured domesticated animals of all imaginable species who are too often left behind and forgotten, incapable of fending for themselves in conjunction with the thousands each year already being rescued – when owners die or go to nursing homes, animals run out of time or space at other shelters, animals are thrown away in the desert or city parks, renters move into homes which reject companion animals, and the countless other reasons that trigger the need for urgent resuce - our whole community is in a state of emergency with innocent lives at enormous risk.”
Whatever the case, the shelters are filling up and, Cotswell says, adoptions are down. “With the economy the way it is,” he says, “people can’t afford it.”
The Humane Society of the United States says, “abandoned animals face a grim future. Many pets trapped inside abandoned homes aren’t found until they’re on the brink of starvation. Those lucky enough to reach a shelter have about a 50 percent chance of being adopted.”
In March, the organization began the Foreclosure Pets Grant Program, a national campaign offering grants of up to $2,000 to shelters, rescues and control agencies in the hopes to assist families in keeping their pets during the economic downturn. They are currently taking applications from qualifying shelters and hoped to begin the notification and funds distribution process sometime in late April.
Stephanie Shain, director of outreach for Companion Animals at the HSUS, states on their website, “Dealing with a financial crisis is scary enough. We hope to ease the burden in some way for families by helping their local shelter help them keep their pet home and part of the family.”
