As the US Congress continues to sputter and stall over legislation designed to keep more Americans from losing their homes, police around the country are already dealing with foreclosure-related crime. In some cases where the sub-prime mortgage meltdown has been particularly bad, agencies have assigned individual officers to work exclusively on crimes related to the empty houses with the big “public auction” sign out front.

A recent article in the Atlanta Constitution profiled one such officer named Brian Ernest. Brian's job is to identify and keep watch over vacant homes. Sometimes it’s squatters or low level criminals just looking for a place to sleep or do some “business.” But increasingly its thieves that want the copper and other metals from a foreclosed home. The increasing cost of metals has savvy burglars on the lookout for recently emptied residences.
Most of the vacant homes are foreclosures, purchased during the housing boom and seized by predatory mortgage lenders after the market bottomed out. But there are other homes whose owners can't find people to rent, and new homes that developers can't sell in the current economy.
"This is a phenomenon that is occurring all over the city, the state and the country," Atlanta P.D. Major Joseph Dallas told the Atlanta Journal Constituion. Dallas runs the police zone in northwest Atlanta that has the highest number of vacant homes. "We had to do something about it."
The brass put officers like Ernest on special assignment in addition to the creation of a task force. Their biggest challenge is a neighborhood called The Bluff.
"This whole block is almost vacant," Ernest told reporters as they rolled through The Bluff during a recent shift. "Everywhere you look, there's vacant properties."
Ernest said crime at vacant homes in The Bluff and elsewhere has gotten so bad, that some property owners pay homeless men to look after their homes, sometimes giving them a key and letting them stay inside.
Atlanta's police and code compliance officers are working together better than in the past to help each other identify deserted homes, Dallas said.
The biggest challenge is just finding the owners. About half of them are banks or mortgage lenders; many others are absentee property owners — investors who bought properties to flip them and have since dropped out of sight.