This photo is part of the action alert/newsletter
Kinship Circle: [GLOBAL] Flood Survivors Need Hay, Animals Amid Bombs…MORE.
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4. Mortgage Crisis Causalities: Companion Animals
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PHOTO: A dog looks from an enclosure at the Queen Anne's County Department of Animal Service in Queenstown, Maryland, 1/24/08. The most pitiful victims of the subprime mortgage crisis are the family pets as people forced out of their homes are giving up their pets. FROM: Baileygirl [at] charter.net
HIDDEN VICTIMS OF MORTGAGE CRISIS: PETS
EDITED FOR LENGTH. FULL:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22900994/
STOCKTON, Calif. - The house was ravaged -- its floors ripped, walls busted and lights smashed by owners who trashed their home before a bank foreclosed on it. Hidden in the wreckage was an abandoned member of the family: a starving pit bull. The dog was too far gone to save -- another example of how pets are becoming the newest victims of the nation’s mortgage crisis as homeowners leave animals behind...
Pets “are getting dumped all over,” said Traci Jennings, president, Humane Society of Stanislaus County, northern California. “Farmers find dogs dumped on grazing grounds, while house cats are showing up in wild cat colonies...”
The first people to enter an abandoned house, such as property inspectors and real estate brokers, have discovered dogs tied to trees in backyards, cats in garages, and turtles, rabbits and lizards in children’s bedrooms.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that forsaken animals are becoming a problem wherever foreclosures are climbing. Stockton and Modesto have some of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates...
PHOTOS: (lt) Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP. In Stockton, Modesto and other nearby cities with some of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation, animal shelters and rescue groups are inundated. (rt) Feral cats are fed a supply of cat food at a park in Stockton, Calif.
The situation has become so widespread that the Humane Society urged home owners faced with foreclosure to take their animals to a shelter. Shelters are trying to keep up, but the spike in abandoned pets comes at a time when fewer people are adopting animals. Home sales are plunging to their lowest level in decades, and new homeowners are often the most likely to seek a pet. [But] even people who are buying homes are not adopting pets...
Bloggers are furious with the “foreclosure pet” phenomenon, especially after seeing photos of emaciated animals on the Internet. Some critics say the pet owners have already proved they are irresponsible by buying houses they could not afford or mortgages they did not bother to understand... Abandoning animals is illegal in most states under anti-cruelty laws, but the laws are not rigidly enforced...
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