Stop the presses. A politician has wildly exaggerated.

“If you take a one-eighth square mile which is generally the size of a city block in most cities, and you end up with one foreclosure on that city block, two things happen immediately,” [Sen. Christopher] Dodd told two separate radio interviewers. “The value of every other home on that city block declines by 1% immediately, and the crime rates go up 2% immediately in that square block.”

An immediate 2% increase from one foreclosure? Oh, come now. Mark Lieberman, senior economist at Fox Business, dissects this claim here.