Candidates unloved in FL town hit by foreclosures

LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. — At Our Daily Bread Food Pantry, the conversation often centers on real estate. Once taboo details — home values and what people paid for their properties — are casually discussed, and there appears to be little shame in walking away from a mortgage or fighting the bank on a foreclosure.

With Florida's Republican presidential primary just days away, the talk has turned to politics. At the food pantry and throughout hard-hit Lehigh Acres, frustrations over the housing crisis and the federal government's seeming inability to help has turned into apathy at best, and rage, at worst.

"They destroyed Florida," said 69-year-old Bobbie Ruggieri, a food pantry volunteer.

Lehigh Acres is about 30 miles east of the Gulf of Mexico's sandy beaches in southwest Florida, slightly northwest of the Everglades. Once sleepy and rural, the area boomed high and hard between 2003 and 2007. The population doubled to about 65,000, mostly from service and construction workers living large off the success of the area's new housing. The fall came just as fast. By 2008, Lehigh Acres and the entire Fort Myers area had the nation's highest foreclosure rate. Currently, one in every 96 homes is in foreclosure.

Here and likely elsewhere, no politician is spared the fury over the housing crunch. Experts say neither President Barack Obama nor any of the Republicans who want to challenge him in November have solutions for falling prices, depressed construction and waves of foreclosures.

Obama said this week that he wants to help struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages. His GOP opponents generally say the government should not interfere in the housing market. But a growing number of experts are advocating a bolder approach to provide relief to the 11 million homeowners in the United States who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney stood in front of an empty, foreclosed home Tuesday and told a small crowd that he would encourage banks to work with homeowners. He also defended the banks, saying they also were hamstrung by the crisis.

"In this case, it's because of the banks," Romney said. "Well, the banks aren't bad people. They're just overwhelmed."

Kit Bock, who owns a landscaping company, listened. He said his company has lost $10 million in business in the past decade. It once employed 160 people but now just 30 are on the payroll.

Bock said he thinks he'll vote for Romney because of his success as a businessman. But Bock said he's not wildly enthusiastic about any candidate.