2000s. the housing boom. you could buy a house for 130, and by the time you closed it could be worth 200 or more. you make pretty good money during that time? we all did. then it all went bust. the bank-owned signs are all over town. look at the valley behind me. it is ground zero for the foreclosure crisis. a year later, foreclosure rates are off the charts, and nearly 14,000 houses are vacant. and scott s properties have become prime real estate for more than just buyers. illegal occupants called squatters have infiltrated nearly every neighborhood in las vegas. how big of a problem are squatters for you? huge. in the last few months i have had to deal with squatters on a weekly basis. have you ever felt threatened? you could be showing a property, looks great from the outside. shows vacant in our multiple listing service and you walk in and there s somebody in the property.
and inhabit those storm drains. it s a pretty surreal place. when i went in and we went in with the help of a local organization i saw people living on beds down there. i saw book shelves, people call this very dark world their home. most of these people are chronic homeless and are people who are addicted to drugs but that doesn t stop these organizations from continuing to go down and try to provide aid for them. you also went on patrol with officers looking for squatters, people who move into homes with no legal rights to them. why is that a problem there in las vegas? that s a different story. there certainly are homeless people inhabiting vacant homes. after the foreclosure crisis and the recession thousands and thousands of people lost their homes. they estimate that still today there are over 10,000 vacant
perez, former labor secretary. you were a part of the obama administration. good to be with you. thank you. you ve received support from extensive democrats but this is a unique political moment. does that kind of establishment support and experience help or hurt your chances? well, i ve got support from the united farm workers, the leader of the farm workers is the son-in-law of cecily chavez. support from the united food and commercial rou workers union and from folks across the spectrum of the party and i m proud of that support. i ve been a fighter my whole career. wall street, took on police reform issues. settled the two fair housing acts of those screwed in the foreclosure crisis. those the fights of my life. what i ve been doing my entire life and we need someone who can take the fight to donald trump. who can make sure we re
understand, but there are ways to stop things. apparently the democrats have found another way. i want to bring back errol louis and ron brownstein. the democrats are trying every which way? hardball. democrats under tremendous pressure from their activist base. last night in new york city there are a big march, hundreds of people who marched from downtown brooklyn to the home of chuck schumer, the democratic conference leader. the message was go in there and fight. no rolling over, no playing ball, no playing by normal rules in a senate where the republican majority frustrated the president on a supreme court nominee for nearly a year. so they have no choice but to react to this. i think that s what you re starting to see here, as well as substantively these are important issues. the foreclosure crisis, the role that certain banks played and seem to have gotten away with, the insider trading which gets to the core of the conflict of interest questions surrounding both members of con
and tom price, they chose not to show up. now this is something to keep a very close eye on for a couple of reasons. we ve noticed they have delayed several committee votes by using procedural tactics, by kind of standing in the way of things and now by boycotting them entirely. the chairman of the senate finance committee orrin hatch said it s something he s never seen before. he believes it s because the democrats can t seem to grasp or accept the fact that donald trump is the president of the united states. the democrats are saying this is nominee specific. they have to feel like they ve been lied to by tom price related to some of his personal stock purchases. they ve been lied to by steve mnuchin, related to some of his former banks or the baunk he and his group owned and their relationship with the foreclosure crisis. that s what they are saying. but what we re seeing right now is a pattern for the democrats. and it s important to keep an eye on this as we watch everything fall o