DAYTON — Take a drive down Fountain Avenue and you can see a mid-afternoon drug deal on the sidewalk, hand-scrawled for sale signs offering houses for $500 down and $300 a month, an abandoned apartment building with plywood windows and a kicked-in front door, and lots of vacant houses.

Welcome to ground zero of Montgomery County's foreclosure crisis. In the last three years, the four-block residential street in the Santa Clara neighborhood between North Main Street and Salem Avenue has seen 45 foreclosed homes sold at sheriff's auction, a Dayton Daily News analysis has found.

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Two girls walk by an abandon apartment on Fountain Avenue in north Dayton Thursday. In a two block area, 18 homes are abandon and boarded up. Jim Noelker/Dayton Daily NewsClick to enlarge

In the 300 block alone, more than half — 15 of 28 properties — were sold at auction between Jan. 1, 2005, and the end of March 2008.

It wasn't always this way.

Years ago the neighborhood was solidly middle class and home to many Jewish merchants, said homeowner Paul Latham, who used to visit with an old-timer down the street.

"He would tell me how the community used to be, how rich it was and how it changed," said Latham, a 12-year resident of 312 Fountain Ave.

The slide downhill has been long and painful.

Latham points across the street to one of the worst eyesores, a vacant brick apartment building at 323 Fountain Avenue. A "No Trespassing" sign hangs above the broken-down door. Torn boards expose shattered windows and the interior, neighbors say, is popular with crack smokers.

Around one corner stands a burned-out house, debris piled in the yard. One block over on Victor Avenue, aluminum siding is stripped off a vacant house as high as a man's arm can reach.

Of the city's 64 neighborhood areas, the Santa Clara district ranks third highest in foreclosure sales, with 196 in the last three years.

"It's become a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers," said Kenneth Conant, neighborhood representative to the Fair River Oaks Council Priority Board.

Surrounded by vacant buildings, homeowner Debbie Maggs' tiny white house with the picket fence at 245 Victor Ave. is notable for its neatness and the silk flowers decorating her porch. Across the street, shredded phone books cover the lawn of the foreclosed and vacant Victorian apartment building.

"That used to be a drug house and they closed it down," said Maggs, who's lived on Victor Avenue for 21 years. "I've kicked people out of that building for stealing copper. You have to be careful because you don't know who's carrying a gun."

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