Recession’s latest buzz: Mosquitoes

Skeeter-buster Keith Colquitt pulls up to a house in the sprawling, upscale Hamilton Mill area of Gwinnett County and immediately wonders if he’s at the right address.

From the cab of his truck, this house doesn’t appear vacant. It looks immaculate. Pristine even, with a well-tended lawn and landscaping that blends nicely with the rest of the neighborhood, where homes sell for $300,000 to $1 million.

Any doubts that he’s in the right place disappear when Colquitt gets a whiff of the backyard pool, which looks like a 30-foot-by-15-foot serving of pea soup mixed with lime Jell-O. A casualty of this home’s foreclosure, it’s also the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes —- and one more reminder of the unusual ways this recession is trickling down into people’s lives.

During the economic good times a few years ago, swimming pools were status symbols. Now, in neighborhoods across metro Atlanta, they’ve become expensive albatrosses for many struggling homeowners and subdivisions. And a headache for neighbors and regulators.

The neglected pools are breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which can carry diseases like West Nile virus. This at a time when the economic downturn has left local governments with less money to fight this potentially deadly foe, and legal obstacles posed by foreclosures and bank failures can slow what efforts are being made.

“We’re seeing a sharp spike in abandoned pools and the mosquito problems that are attendant to it. I haven’t seen it to any extent approaching this [previously],” said Joseph Conlon, technical adviser for the American Mosquito Control Association in Jacksonville. “In the past, we’ve had people abandon their home or go on vacation. It was just a case of bad neighbors. In this case, it’s driven economically.”

The problem seems to have sprung up “overnight,” said Colquitt, a code enforcement supervisor in the Gwinnett County police department’s Quality of Life unit. “All of a sudden the housing market crashes, developers are going under, there are layoffs. It just really put a big hurt on everybody. We see it from this end all the way to [the wealthy enclave of] Sugarloaf [Country Club].”

Other metro Atlanta counties, such as Fulton and Clayton, say they are also dealing with more mosquito-related complaints due to abandoned pools and foreclosures.

Rain, fewer resources

As if declining home values, a shrinking tax base and fewer resources weren’t enough to deal with, heavier-than-normal rainfall this year has only made matters worse.

Mosquitoes don’t need a lot of water to breed. A capful will do. Or the inside of an old tire. So foreclosed homes with pools left with stagnant, unfiltered water can become an all-you-can-breed nursery.

“Swimming pools produce a lot of mosquitoes,” many of which carry West Nile, said Joye Burton, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Community Health. So far this year, no cases of West Nile virus have been reported in the state.

Colquitt, one of 29 enforcers in Gwinnett’s Quality of Life unit, recalled a letter from one Gwinnett resident who lived next door to a foreclosed home with a pool: “I can’t enjoy my backyard anymore because of what’s happening next door.”

These days, his unit spends about a third of its time dealing with foreclosed and abandoned properties. Each officer logs about 100 miles a day making rounds. Their target list, compiled from complaints, includes more than 160 properties. Untold hundreds more exist. And the unit is only two-thirds the size it was when it was started in 2007 with 42 police and civilian members.

“Because of the economy, we haven’t been able to replace them,” said Maj. Dan Branch, who heads the unit.

TARP vs. tarps

While the federal government works with banks and other lenders to fix the ailing housing market and economy, folks like Colquitt wrestle with part of the downstream debris of this recession, armed with pool-covering tarps, larvicide briquets and lots of bug repellent.

On this day, among Colquitt’s stops is a large parcel of land once part of a neighboring golf course. The neglected area has a pond no longer visible from the road because of overgrowth; it’s most likely a mosquito den by now, he says. The same goes for an abandoned pool he finds at a subdivision where the homeowners association no longer exists.

Crime also lends a hand in boosting the mosquito population. At one foreclosed home, Colquitt said, thieves made off with the plumbing system’s copper pipes, leaving a gushing mess behind.

Tracking mosquitoes, though, is easier than tracking down the owner of a foreclosed home. Finding a property’s rightful owner may require stealth, detective work and patience, and the trail can lead to faraway places such as Colombia and China, where’s it’s virtually impossible to force them to take action.

Georgia agencies such as Gwinnett’s Quality of Life team face an extra burden tracking down owners. The collapse of 16 Georgia banks to date —- all of which were heavily tied to the real estate crash —- means enforcers may now run into even more obstacles.

“It’s problematic for us because banks have gone belly up as well and that creates problems of who’s responsible,” Branch said.

Delays and dead ends

State laws aren’t much help.

In Georgia, deeds from a foreclosure auction aren’t required to be filed quickly, said Emory University law Professor Frank S. Alexander, who has written a book about Georgia’s foreclosure problems. It can take months for the information to find its way to the courthouse, he said.

As a result, many local governments are in the dark about the ownership of many properties. And in many cases, unless it’s an extreme circumstance or poses immediate danger, officials can’t act to fix the problem without first getting the owner’s permission.

“It’s almost impossible for local governments to find out who the owner is so they can deal with the public nuisance,” Alexander said. A bill to address that problem was introduced during the last legislative session but was not enacted, he said.

Once owners are found, they’re given time to fix the problem. If they don’t act, they can be taken to court. Branch estimates his unit has had to take at least 1,000 cases to court in the last two years.

If the problem drags on, the unit often has no choice but to address the issue itself. It has already gone through nearly half the batch of mosquito-fighting chemicals it got at the beginning of the year. The larvicide briquets are dropped like Alka-Seltzer tablets into the pools. Some pools are covered to keep children and animals out.

Multiply Gwinnett’s mosquito to-do list by millions of homes, businesses, golf courses, apartment complexes and subdivisions with pools, ponds, fountains or damaged indoor plumbing nationwide and you get an idea of the spillover effect foreclosures have on communities.

“There are all kinds of stealthy costs that nobody factors in when people ask, ‘How do foreclosures affect you?’ ” said Andy Carswell, assistant professor of housing and consumer economics at the University of Georgia. “This just continues to add to the cost of foreclosures from a community standpoint.”

Cover story Foreclosure fallout

Business

The Mosquito Index

Metro Atlanta Foreclosures (number of homes in some stage of foreclosure proceedings during the first seven months of 2009):

Cobb: 7,044

DeKalb: 9,949

Fulton: 14,036

Gwinnett: 12,708

Total for 13-county greater Atlanta: 65,542

Total rainfall in Metro Atlanta* (through Aug. 2)

2009: 31.81 inches

2008: 27.25 inches

*At Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport

Gwinnett County Quality of Life unit

County size: 437 square miles

Code enforcers: 29

Assigned cases of foreclosed/vacant homes: 166

Swimming pool code violations: 106

Success rate dealing with code enforcement problems: 90 percent

Sources: “Atlanta Foreclosure Report,” Equity Depot in Alpharetta; National Weather Service, Atlanta; Quality of Life unit, Gwinnett County Police

Funds to fight mosquitoes dry up

While Georgia’s mosquito population is booming, programs to prevent the spread of the West Nile virus the insects can carry are being cut back.

Georgia is in the midst of its West Nile virus season, which runs from May to October. Many counties have few resources to fight the problem. West Nile prevention programs in Gwinnett, Rockdale and Newton counties, for example, no longer exist and fewer federal dollars are flowing into Georgia for other such programs.

“Most mosquito-abatement programs are funded by taxes, and some [programs] depend on property values,” said Joseph Conlon, technical adviser for the American Mosquito Control Association in Jacksonville. “As property values drop, the taxes supporting the abatement and prevention programs drop. And that’s unfortunate.”

Officials in states including Arizona, Illinois, Michigan and New York report similar problems and health issues tied to neglected swimming pools and foreclosures.

California, which has struggled with the problem since the beginning of the recession nearly two years ago, has enlisted the help of the real estate community to help track the problem.

Last year, California had 445 reported cases of West Nile —- the first case occurred next door to a home with a stagnant pool.

Tammy Joyner

Also inside

> What happened to funds for West Nile prevention programs? D4