Home foreclosures in Atlanta are rising not only in the central areas of the metro area, but also in the suburban areas.
According to the Gwinnett County Coalition for Health and Human Services, the pace of foreclosures in communities northeast of Atlanta soared by 77 percent in 2009 compared to 2008. Due largely to the foreclosures, the number of homeless children aged 9 and below has risen to around 60 percent of all homeless people in Gwinnett County.
Housing analysts and social services workers said that suburban foreclosures and homelessness are surging not only in Atlanta, but also in Suffolk County in New York, Cook County in Illinois and in other large metro areas that have sparked sharp suburban growth over the past years.
Commissioners of social service departments across the country are saying that the numbers of people turning to social service agencies for help are overwhelming and are now including more faces that they have never seen before. More and more Americans who have never sought government assistance before are now approaching local agencies for help.
This February, the rate of home foreclosures in Atlanta climbed up by 27 percent compared to the previous month. Across the 13 counties that comprise the Atlanta metropolitan area, more than 10,300 homes were listed for the public foreclosed homes sale in March. The February figure marked a 27-percent jump from the more than 8,100 postings in the previous month of January and a 34-percent jump from the more than 7,700 postings in February 2009.
According to Barry Bramlett, president of Georgia-based foreclosure tracking firm Equity Depot, the foreclosure crisis has spread from the lower-income neighborhoods into the affluent communities and into the commercial sector.
In January this year, the pace of Georgia home foreclosures slowed compared to the previous month, just like in most other states. More than 11,200 households statewide were hit with delinquency or foreclosure notices, including more than 4,500 units already counted as real estate owned. The number however was still higher by 14 percent than foreclosure postings in January 2009.
In 2009, Georgia was among the top ten U.S. states clobbered by foreclosures. With more than 106,000 or 2.7 percent of its households in distress, Georgia ranked seventh in the foreclosure charts.
Just like in most other metro areas, home foreclosures in Atlanta surged due largely to the continued increase in job losses in the area. The unemployment rate in Metro Atlanta hit 10.1 percent in December last year.