LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles city attorney’s office has renewed its call to blame mortgage lenders for urban blight sparked by the collapsed housing market, saying in a lawsuit that US Bank is a slumlord that illegally evicted homeowners and then neglected the abandoned properties.
The suit filed Monday marks the second time in just over a year that prosecutors have brought such a claim, mirroring a similar complaint against Deutsche Bank.
The city attorney’s office contends the lenders destroyed neighborhoods by wrongly kicking people out of homes and leaving hundreds of properties to become trash-strewn crime magnets. City officials say banks that helped fuel a housing boom by dealing in securities backed by risky loans should be responsible for the blight caused by foreclosures that came when the market soured.
“The fraud committed on Wall Street, turns into blight on Main Street,” said City Attorney Carmen A. Trutanich on Tuesday.
US Bank and Deutsche Bank officials have both said that they are not responsible for the decline, arguing that loan servicers that collect payments and manage properties are to blame.
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