The phrase "The Bronx is burning" uttered by Howard Cosell during a Yankees World Series game in 1977, refers to the arson epidemic in South Bronx during the 1970s. It was during this time that arson became popular because landlords would collect the insurance money for the building. Sometimes, prior to being set on fire, the building would be stripped of wiring, plumbing, metal fixtures, and anything else of value so as to retain some of the owner’s investments. Also, some fires in the South Bronx were simply caused because of deteriorating electrical systems or neglect on the landlord’s part as they still are today. The presence of several of these vacant, burnt-down buildings contributed to the atmosphere similar to that of a war-devastated country.
Driving around in Aspen Hill, increasingly I have been struck by the number of houses with significantly overgrown yards. Some of the yards have been overgrown for quite some time, and many of the houses have had "for sale" signs in front of them for a long time.
There's a difference between someone with an overlong lawn, and someone whose yard has been left to grow for most of a hot mid-Atlantic summer without the moderating touch of a human hand.
There's a very popular shrub you see in yard in Aspen Hill, aside from the ubiquitous Azalea, and that is the Euonymus. Euonymus is popular because it's very hardy and easily survives both the worst of winter and hottest of summers. Deer will eat them if they're starving, but usually prefer almost anything else. Euonymus doesn't have thorns, it's easy to trim, and makes a fairly nice hedge with very little work... and if you don't aggressively work to keep it under control, Euonymus climbs trees and strangles them. Aggressively maintained, it's a fantastic decorative; it would rather climb but will turn into a nicely shaped lump of hedge bush if it can't find anything to crawl up. The National Park Service lists it as one of its "Least Wanted" alien species. The National Park Service, by the way, has an excellent and informative website on how destructive are invasive alien species.
Almost all of the houses that I drive by have Euonymus in the yard, and a lot of it is getting out of hand. Lots of other vegetation in the yards is getting out of hand as well, though probably a lot of that is either native varieties, or non-natives that "play nicely" with the native species. Azalea is an example of a "nice" plant, it's not hard to maintain, and while it definitely will grow and expand, it does so quite slowly, and thus is in fair competition with other species that grow at comparable rates.
But this is less about maintaining the yards so as to maintain the ecosystems.
Not far from where I live -- walking distance, actually -- there is a house which actually did recently sell, after more than a year on the market. Yet it seems to be only sparsely occupied, and across the street from that is one empty rental house, next to another empty rental house. Both of these have well-maintained yards; both are owned by responsible landlords who are both upgrading and retrofitting their properties in the hiatus between two very long-term rentors.
Yet in other places, even in the so-called "expensive end" of Aspen Hill, there are houses which are rapidly falling back to jungle and don't seem to have an owner, or at least they don't have a responsible owner. Nobody is maintaining the yards, not even so much as to cut the lawn, must less to knock back the Euonymus or the English Ivy. And now these houses are taking on the appearance of being overgrown, and over time, English Ivy will tear apart bricks. Invasive species take their toll when they're not controlled, and in the modern day, most biologists and parks managers will advise people to never even introduce them unless you want to make a committment in perpetuity to be sure to keep them under control. Because after all, the thing about aliens is that, well, they're alien. They don't control their own growth. Why would they? They have no natural predators in the new environment, and so they operate without restraint. Euonymus will pull down trees, as will English Ivy, but English Ivy will pull down homes, given time.
As quickly as English Ivy can pull down an unmaintained brick or stone house -- about a century -- "scrappers" can ruin such a place much faster.
"Scrappers", as I am using the term, are the people who break into uninhabited homes and steal the metals, such as copper wiring or pipe, or even the steel and iron pipes.
Such vandalism and theft was a huge part of the destruction of much of South Bronx during the 1970s, and "insurance arson" was another huge part. One problem with this, besides the obvious problem of risk to life and the reduction of the cityscape to the appearance and functionality of a bombed-out zone, was that this had economic impacts far larger than most people realize. Insurance is predicated on statistical risks, and when the incidence of losses exceeds the statistical risk by several orders of magnitude, insurers can actually lose their ability to cover the losses, and have to borrow at interest, and everyone winds up paying more. If the rest of the insurance industry cannot (or will not) cover the losses, the insurer becomes insolvent, and it may even be that the taxpayer will have to subsidize the failure.
More to the point, when this sort of thing happens, and looks as if it will continue to happen, eventually no insurer will cover the area. It's considered nothing but a certainty of a dead loss and a route to insovency, and any company that wants to stay in business simply won't take on this sort of customer.
Comparable examples might be seen, outside of the concept of "insurance arsons", in South Central Los Angeles. After the infamous Rodney King Riots of 1992, good luck getting either commercial business property insurance, or health insurance, at rates the rest of the country would consider reasonable, or even at rates that the rest of Los Angeles would consider reasonable. You and/or your business are too expensive to insure, because you're at too great a risk.
In South Bronx, people were able to profit by "insurance arson" mostly because nobody understood that a rash of pay-outs concentrated mostly in a few urban neighborhoods would effectively bankrupt the insurance funds -- insurance funds that ordinarily provide lending capital for industry and other funds -- leading to Recession. In the modern day, it's understood that such activities must be very aggressively investigated and prosecuted. But are there enough investigators and prosecutions to deal with insurance-arson of even one percent of the approximately 3-million homes (nationwide) that are either in foreclosure or facing foreclosure in the very near future? That would be, what, 30,000 investigations and prosecutions?
In any case, none of the institutions that would be called on to cover the losses have the financial wherewithal, not even if the Federal government were to octuple the present size of the Trillion Dollar Bank Bailout.
So there's simply no reason for the banks (or their agents) to burn down these foreclosed properties; as bad off as they are in terms of finances already, such a course of action would only make it much worse, not only for them, but for the entire industry.
However, if you live next door to a house that has been gutted for metals by "scrappers", and is infested with rats or other vermin up to and including homeless "squatters", and the yard has become an overgrown jungle where the Lyme-disease-infested deer are frolicking along with rabies-carrying raccoons, you probably don't give a crap about what happens to the banks or their economic sector. You might just decide to solve a lot of problems with a little gasoline and a match.
Don't do it!
Just go take your lawn mower over and cut the lawn, and talk one of the other neighbors into trimming up the shrubs. At least the place won't be obviously a target for "scrappers" or "squatters".
Of course, if you're in a neighborhood such as Aspen Hill -- which is one of the most foreclosed-upon neighborhoods in Montgomery County -- there may not be enough neighbors to go around, to take care of all of the houses that need even casual yard care. Months ago, in a stretch of Aspen Hill Road that's only about 2 miles long, there were more than 10 homes in foreclosure and those have since been evicted and emptied. There are others there as well, which didn't even advertize for sale; people just packed up and "walked away". On a few blocks, there are some places where for one particular house, there are no neighbors to assume yard care; they too got foreclosed on and evicted.
So, all around, the situation is getting grim, but as bad as it has been, it is about to get much worse as the "alt-a" mortgates (one step up from sub-prime, but not much of a step up) all go through their first rate reset. As a function of time, and as a function of all of the "mortgage rescue" laws having past their own time limits, there is nothing to save these people other than maybe winning the lottery, and unemployment continues to rise in raw numbers, even though the rate of job losses continues to decrease with almost no new job creation. By mid-November the majority of people who will lose their homes under alt-A mortgages will be either out in the street or only a month away from service and eviction.
And what will there be for them to do, other than to break into foreclosed homes, to escape the mounting chill of oncoming winter? And with no electricity, and with the metals already scavenged, how to get heat and light other than with fire?
When will the Bronx be burning here?
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