Clark County Juvenile Thugs Bail Out Bank Of America

Bank of America is one of the worst banks out there. From accepting TARP funding to throwing people out of their homes without cause to neglecting foreclosed homes.
Now, a great program for juvenile, hopefully thugs no more, are now taking care of the outsides of foreclosed homes in which banks have neglected.
From the Las Vegas Sun: This is what it’s come to amid the collapse of the housing market. Thirty-one kids, some of them gang members, weeding and trimming the front yard of a foreclosed home in northeast Las Vegas. County code enforcement officials had called Bank of America Corp., which was identified on a flier placed on the garage door as the contact for the home in this older, blue-collar neighborhood. Officials wanted the bank to maintain the property. But no one replied from the bank, according to the county.
So one recent weekday morning, Juvenile Probation Officer Kevin Niday and his Gang Intervention Team used three county vehicles to haul the teens to Christy Lane. There was a convicted shoplifter, several taggers, a couple of kids involved in street fights, some who used weapons. Each had been sentenced to 50 to 100 hours of community service.
Niday says the teens develop workplace discipline through the program, a fresh set of skills and the ability to work with other teens, some of whom may be from rival gangs. Yet, the longtime probation officer is also a realist. “They should be paying. They should be doing it,” Niday says of what the county characterizes as Bank of America’s failure to maintain the landscaping, “but it’s work for us.”
Some of that work is done by Niday’s crew, but much of it is performed by private contractors that charge about $300 per home, altogether costing the cash-strapped county about $350,000 through the budget year that ended June 30. County officials attempt to recoup those costs and related fines through liens placed against the homes, only to be recovered when those houses are sold.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/jul/30/juvenile-offenders-helping-clean-homes-foreclosure/
I think this is a great program for the kids. It teaches responsibility, how to care for property and gives them some physical exercises as opposed to sitting at home watching TV or playing on the computer. It also keeps them away from their gangs, at least for a short time.
But it is a shame that banks like BOA and others that neglect homes they foreclosed on. This is happening all over the Valley and what happens the properties that are not kept up, undesirables come to that neighborhood. Many times, these houses are taken over by the homeless or drug dealers. There have been fires in some of these homes caused by the homeless and drug sales from the homes. These banks think they can just foreclose on the home and then do nothing with them until they sell the home.
So, kudos to these kids and Clark County for doing this but they need to recoup the cost of taking care of the homes from the banks. Maybe the County can bill the banks and if they refuse to pay, then have a sheriff's sale for one of the bank's buildings.