CLEVLAND, OH. — A wave of foreclosures and evictions is about to sweep the United States in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis. This could destabilise the US housing market and may also lead to further turmoil in financial institutions, who collectively own $1 trillion (£480.6bn) worth of sub-prime debt. Cleveland, Ohio, is an industrial city on the banks of Lake Erie in the US ‘rust belt’. It is the sub-prime capital of the United States. One in ten homes in the city is now vacant, and whole neighbourhoods have been blighted by foreclosed, vandalized and boarded-up homes. Many of these homes are now owned by the banks and investment pools owning the mortgages, and the company making the most foreclosures in Cleveland is Deutsche Bank Trust, which acts on behalf of such investment pools. Cleveland is facing a rising crime wave, and the cost of demolishing the vacant houses alone will cost the city $100m of its tax base. According to Jim Rokakis, the County Treasurer for Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, ‘Wall Street strategies that made the cycle of no-money-down, no-questions-asked lending possible have sucked the life out of my city’. […]