Foreclosures: great real estate for mosquitoes

Foreclosed homes have created a new problem in some areas: pools that are left to sit and collect water have become breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

And residents and county officials worry they could become a health threat.

Joe Cheer is an employee of Hernando County Mosquito Control who is spending more and more time around the abandoned back yard pools of foreclosed homes.

"They are beautiful homes and we're seeing more and more of them," he said.

The numbers support Cheers' assessment: there are estimates that there could be as many as 1,000 foreclosed homes with pools in Hernando County.

Anita Schmidt lives next to one of them.

"It's been pretty severe. We've got a screened-in back porch and we spend a lot of time in there, it's pretty bad," she said.

Health officials say mosquitoes that breed in abandoned pools are more than a nuisance.

"Pools breed species that are a vector to transmit West Nile virus and encephalitis," said Dr. Guangye Hu, with Hernando Mosquito Control.

Hernando County has been especially hard hit by the foreclosure crisis, and complaints about mosquitoes breeding in the pools of foreclosed homes have increased dramatically. Last year there were 250 complaints about foreclosed homes with abandoned pools. This year, in just one month, there were 90 complaints.

Cheer is one of just four people who go out in the field to handle all the complaints, and he is getting no extra money to respond to the growing number of foreclosure complaints.

In fact, the county now uses fish to eat mosquito larva instead of more expensive chemicals.
There are estimates there could be as many as 1,000 foreclosed homes with pools in Hernando County.