The foreclosure crisis has devastated the California economy and it is far from over. According to Realtytrac.com, over 2 million families in the state will have lost their homes by the end of 2012. While it's difficult to calculate the personal and social cost of this economic disaster, the economic devastation is all too clear. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the cost of the housing bubble as a whole is over $8 trillion; California's share may be upwards of $1 trillion of this... The immediate value of the foreclosed property also plummets, along with the value of surrounding homes. According to research by Dan Immergluck (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Geoff Smith (Woodstock Institute), each foreclosed property reduces the value of surrounding homes within an eighth of a mile by 0.9percent.
