Vacant, foreclosed homes ‘going to pot’

Foreclosed homes left empty are increasingly in need of maintenance. Others have been deluged with intruders and squatters, some cultivating short-term marijuana farms.

The problem has particularly surfaced in Las Vegas. For example, at one foreclosed home in Las Vegas, police seized 878 marijuana plants worth about $2.6 million, the Los Angeles Times reports.

In Nevada – which for the last few years has had the highest foreclosure rate in the country – authorities this year have busted at least 130 indoor grow sites, which is nearly two dozen more than at the same point in 2010, the Times reported.

“You can’t have crime without opportunity,” William Sousa, a criminologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told the Times. “And all those empty homes present an opportunity for criminal activity.”