By Gary Nelson | The Arizona Republic
No one is likely to attach a historical plaque to a particular two-story townhouse in northwest Mesa.
Cute as it might be, it looks pretty much like any of the other 126 units in its complex, and there’s no record of anything historical happening there.
But 1535 N. Horne, No. 47, will have its little place in history, nonetheless, standing as testimony to Mesa’s fight to recover from one of America’s most disastrous real-estate crashes.
Crews were busy there last week, laying tile, applying paint and otherwise completely redoing a home that had falen into the clutches of foreclosure. It’s typical for what the city has done with dozens of properties that suffered a similar fate, but it’s also among the last of such projects.
After almost five years, Mesa’s participation in the federally funded Neighborhood Stabilization Program is nearing its final stages. When it’s over, Mesa will have cycled more than $15 million into the program.
Over the half-decade since its inception, the effort morphed from an innercity rescue mission into a campaign to help a much wider swath of the city, even as the housing market moved into recovery mode.
