In a decade handling evictions for the Miami-Dade County Police Department, Albert Fernandez has run across a middle-class father bankrupted by his daughter’s cancer treatment; an old woman scammed by a gambling husband; and countless families perpetually on the edge of poverty.
...
If South Florida is a barometer for the housing crisis and the economy, the forecast does not look good. Like other areas nationwide, evictions are rising throughout the state, clogging county courts and spawning a boom in companies that specialize in “eviction services” like moving furniture to the curb.
In the first three months of this year, Broward County tallied 3,043 eviction requests — more than it has received in the same period since at least 1999, and an increase of 54 percent over last year. In Miami-Dade, landlords filed for 4,726 evictions from January through April, up 1,157 from the first four months of last year.
When it's not just the tenants that are getting the axe, but the landlords as well it's getting downright "fever swamp" in the tropics of South Florida.
These economic policies were set in motion in large part through the efforts of the republicans who detested the banking laws enacted by FDR in the days of the Great Depression. They saw (and still see) the government as having no business in regulating business. Clearly, business can not only not regulate itself, it has no desire to do so as long as someone at the top of the food chain makes a profit whether it be executives, shareholders or both.
Enron, the major banks, what's the next industry to disappear down the rabbit hole? Construction? Airlines? Major utilities when customers can't pay the bills or they are not selling power to empty houses?
