Virginia county will buy foreclosed homes

There are different ways to handle the foreclosure problem that has spread across the nation. Fairfax County, Va., has found its own.

Writer Amy Gardner with the Washington Post wrote earlier this week that the county will buy foreclosed homes and make them available to middle-income families. This will help alleviate two problems at once: providing affordable housing in a part of Virginia that has little, and reducing the number of vacant foreclosed homes on the market.

You can read the story here.

I have to say, this is an innovative way to addressing these serious issues. It may not be a longterm solution — the number of foreclosed properties can’t keep going up forever, so Fairfax County officials will have to come up with some other way to provide affordable housing — but at least it’s a creative attempt to deal with a problem.