By Dianne Anderson

Every other corner, it seems, if not every other house, in the Inland Empire is boarded up or has a for sale sign stuck in barren front yards.

With the second most recent competitive round of NSP funding designed to address foreclosure issues,

California cities and counties shared $318 million under the HUD initiative to rehabilitate and resell the state's skyrocketing foreclosed homes.

The state Housing and Community Development NSP first round of funding brought down $8 million to the city of San Bernardino and $22 million to San Bernardino County last year.

In a perfect world, some of those dollars would help alleviate the foreclosures throughout the 62nd District. Ideally, they could be purchased from banks at a slight discount, rehabilitated for resale. At the same time, it could give struggling small business owners and unemployed a boost with jobs.

It sounds good in theory, but in reality most low-income workers and small contractors are far away from those Stimulus dollars.

Ratibu Jacocks, local businessman and community advocate, said when it comes to black contractors, it’ disturbing to see how little is reaching the community with jobs.

So far, bigger construction agencies and larger contractors have grabbed most of the shovel-ready project contracts. Moderately skilled workers in the community and small businesses are failing while waiting for any trickle to come their way.

To prove his point, not long ago Jacocks said that he attended an event at the University of Riverside and posed the question about what, if any, dollars were pointed toward black business. He has yet to receive a substantive answer.

“Ask how many dollars are spent with black businesses and you’ll be shocked. First of all they don’t know and secondly they don’t care, and thirdly they’re not doing it,” said Jacocks.

He projects around 2,500 foreclosed bank owned homes in the 62nd District, and growing. But he’s hopeful over a group of interested professionals who have pledged to support what might become a viable housing rehabilitation pilot program.

The professional collaborative would buy the foreclosed homes; sustainable programs would landscape, refurbish, and install energy saving technology. Homes could be purchased below market value from FDIC, and the coalition’s real estate partners could resell attractive energy efficient properties while helping rebuild the local community.

“A buyer could purchase the home for $200,000, and a solar panel costs $15,000, the financing would be $215,000 for a 30-year period,” he said.  “We believe this will work.”

The plan could also benefit the community with ongoing apprenticeships and actual jobs at the end of the line instead of endless training opportunities.

However, the first hurdle is getting banks to release properties that they won’t sell under the market for fear of driving housing prices further down, or more likely, fear of losing more profit. The second hurdle is to get from job training to turn into actual jobs.

The first round of  Neighborhood Stabilization Program funding brought down $3.9 billion in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds last year to state and local governments to try to get on top of the massive foreclosures that are dragging down neighborhoods. The money, administered by the state Housing and Community Development and local governments, wants to eliminate blight by either demolishing properties, or buying and fixing up homes for resale or rent in low-income communities.

In the recent second round of NSP funding, HUD allocated $1.93 billion to local and state governments.

Among the cities and their partner agencies that received the latest round of NSP2 grants in California are Indio at $8,130,000; Los Angeles, $100,000; Santa Ana, $10,000,000; Modesto, $25,000,000; Center for Community Self-Help, $11,763,553;  Housing Trust of Santa Clara County, Inc., $25,000,000; City of Long Beach, $22,249,980; Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc., $60,000,000, and Alameda County, $11,000,000.

The San Bernardino Economic Development Agency did not return calls for comment by press time.

Next week, the statewide advocates for low-income communities and communities of color, the  Community Reinvestment Coalition, goes to Washington, D.C. to present findings from their survey to congressional, regulatory and administration offices.

CRC policy advocate, Kimberly Jones, said that the organization has viewed the NSP funding as a flawed hype, promoting “hope for homeowners part two” that passed in 2008. The actual implementation of NSP is showing problems at several levels.

The discount that lending institutions would take to move the program through NSP was too substantial, and the banks didn’t want to take the chance, she said. While the second round of NSP seemed more realistic, the holders of the mortgage-backed securities believed somehow that the market on these properties would rebound, but it hasn’t.

Early on, she believes banks expected to recoup their losses, which could explain why they haven’t been so willing to let the properties go through NSP. So, neighborhoods keep falling into blight.

“Banks aren’t lending unless first time homebuyers have spotless credit and [often] twenty percent down,” she said. “If you are not in that situation, then what are they [the agencies] doing with this money?”

Jones is a member of the New York State Bar and the State Bar of California, and has worked with the National Urban League, and several other progressive organizations.

It doesn’t help matters, she added, that redevelopment agencies, especially in California, are up against a state raid on their funding, which leaves municipalities more strained.

As for the latest NSP2 funding, Los Angeles county agencies and organizations pulled in the most money because it ramped up efforts to get the money. Both nonprofits and for-profits were aggressively competing.

“There were more people with more savvy,” she said. “There’s a lot of that through this whole crisis, who do you know, how do you know, and how do the municipalities get along with bank entities.”

She said the banks are still quiet on the issue.

“They’re hoping everybody will forget about it, I think the banks have collective amnesia about a lot of things. Certainly NSP is one of those things,” she said.