They are mowing lawns, trimming shrubs, boarding up windows and doors, replacing stolen fences and clearing out trash, then charging property owners for the work.

The work stems from city ordinances in nearly every state to stop foreclosed properties from turning into eyesores that drag down property values and endanger neighborhoods, says James Brooks, program director for community development at the National League of Cities. Otherwise, the foreclosure crisis can undo decades of investment in neighborhoods, he says.

"Cities are trying to get financial institutions to do this, but does that mean that the public works director also goes in with a lawn mower? Yes," Brooks says. "Cities are doing that all over the place because, in some cases, they have to."

In Cape Coral, Fla., the city's code-enforcement officers have become property managers, says Frank Cassidy, code compliance division manager. Since June 2007, when Cape Coral started tracking foreclosed properties, city workers have mowed 5,234 lawns on vacant homes. Last year, the southwestern Florida city collected $414,000 in liens imposed on foreclosed properties.

"We've had to change our tactics to deal with violations" in vacant foreclosed homes, Cassidy says.

Nearly 350 cities have passed ordinances that include requiring banks and other property owners to do more maintenance and fining them if they don't, says Diane Roman Fusco, spokeswoman for Safeguard Properties, a private company that inspects and maintains foreclosed properties nationwide. Several cities require owners to register vacant foreclosed properties so cities can better track them.

Chula Vista, Calif., was one of the first cities two years ago to pass such rules and impose fines up to $1,000 for an infraction, says Doug Leeper, the city's code enforcement division manager. If the city has to repair a fence or clean a pool, it charges the owner for the cost of the work, plus an average $128 an hour for the time a code enforcement officer spends on the case.

"It's much cheaper for them to do it themselves," Leeper says.

The city has imposed $1.5 million in fines and collected $600,000 since the program started.

Last year, South Bend, Ind., boarded up 1,000 properties that had broken or missing windows and doors, says Catherine Toppel, director of code enforcement. So far this year, the city has boarded up nearly 900, about half of them foreclosures, and Toppel expects to surpass last year's total.

"Foreclosures play one of the biggest roles," she says. The problem, Toppel says, is the lag time between when an owner leaves a house that is being foreclosed on and when the bank takes over. The house likely remains vacant during that period, which can stretch up to a year, and no one is there to oversee it, she says. The difficulty for cities is that it's not always easy to figure out who is responsible for the property — and who should pay.

"If you don't address this," Cassidy says, "it produces more blight and you can lose control quickly."

		Volunteer Tony Brigandi,18, cuts grass followed by Cape Coral, Fla., code-enforcement officer Henry Lopez. They were among a group of volunteers pitching in last August to help clean up a foreclosed property. By Terry Allen Williams, The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press