Family Pets Also Victimized by Foreclosure Crisis

(July 18) -- Abandoned pets may be one of the less-visible ramifications of the festering foreclosure crisis. Shelters in some of the nation's worst-hit regions report a surge in animals that have either been left behind by their owners or dropped off at shelters in hopes that new owners can be found.

Pet rescuers in some of the hard-hit areas of the country report they have been flooded with calls for help by pet owners no longer able to afford their animals. Statistics are difficult to obtain, but the Humane Society of the United States says it has noticed a huge increase over the past couple of years of reports of animals being left behind.

"It has been a regular occurrence," said Adam Goldfarb, director of the group's Pets at Risk program, adding that the reasons are murky. "Maybe people are a little embarrassed about the idea of going to a shelter."

Family pets fall victim to the foreclosure crisis, too

Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP

Animal shelters in areas with high foreclosure rates have reported a surge of abandoned animals. Here, two dogs are shown at the Stockton Animal Shelter in Stockton, Calif., in 2008.

Earlier this week, authorities in Glendale, Calif., near Los Angeles, discovered three pet dogs that had been left for more than a week without food or water at a foreclosed home. A Samaritan apparently gave the animals basic sustenance, but they were in poor condition when they were reported to the Glendale Humane Society.

Officials in Las Vegas, one of the foreclosure leaders, have reported a surge in calls. And the Michigan Humane Society, which covers Detroit and two other small cities in southeast Michigan, saw the proportion of its calls due to abandonment skyrocket over the past three years.

"Typically, it's pets locked up in a house or people moving away without their animals," said Nancy Gunnigle, spokeswoman for the MHS, which was featured in Animal Planet's "Animal Cops: Detroit" program.

She said it can be hard, though, to track the changes statistically, since people on the verge of losing their homes often won't be honest with shelter workers when they drop off their pets.

In Phoenix, the two-year-old Lost Our Home Pet Foundation, a foster-home group for pets, said it has taken in about 1,100 animals but has been forced to turn away several thousand more.

"We're small organization," said Executive Director Jodi Polanski, who helped form the organization among animal-loving real estate professionals when her mortgage industry job dried up. "What we see is not an indication of the valley as a whole. In the summertime, our reports of family pets in the back yard have gone down, but our intakes have gone up."

Most of the pets the group receives are from people who have lost their homes or been evicted from rentals and can no longer care for their pets. The group tries to place the animals with volunteer caregivers until the owners can get back on their feet. But many are simply turned over to the group in hopes it can find them a permanent home, Polanski said.

She said her group has about 80 volunteers who can house up to 140 pets. "We have about 70 cats on the intake wait list and 40 dogs," she said. "There's just a lack of foster space for them."

The group also offers a food bank for pet owners, but Polanski said the shelves are nearly bare due to demand. "That's really just gone really big," she said. "People who are having problems just are not able to feed their pets anymore."

Goldfarb, of the National Humane Society, applauds such groups.

"It's great when people in those industries take these steps," he said. "But it's not their job -- the onus is on the owners to take care of their animals."

And the problem could get worse. Forbes reported recently that some cities already hit hard by foreclosure rates face another spike as the economic recovery fails to add significant levels of jobs.