Foreclosures, my uneducated response to a single article

This is an old article, one from March, but someone mentioned to me this aspect of the foreclosure crisis today, and I looked at this. It got me thinking, and what started as an email response spiraled into this. It isn't art, but I wanted to put it here; I hope no one minds.

The article's "take-away" element is this:
"Real-estate agents estimate that about half of foreclosed properties to be sold by mortgage companies nationwide have "substantial" damage, according to a new survey by Campbell Communications, a marketing and research firm based in Washington, D.C."
The article does not, however, offer any frame of reference for this statistic. For instance, I would like to know how many rental homes have "substantial damage" when the tenants move out and also what percentage of foreclosed homes had "substantial damage" before the start of the current 'foreclosure crisis.' The article also buries deep the fact that vandals often break into abandoned houses and smash things. Mortgage defaulters can hardly be considered responsible for that, yet these occurrences would fall into the 'nearly half' statistic they are using.
I would also add that, whatever the reasons for the damage (in some cases for money, other cases for 'revenge'), many of these homes are going to be purchased by the sorts of lowlife entities who put billboards up in low-income neighborhoods (like all over Oak Cliff, South Dallas, Brooklyn, The Bronx, etc.) advertising that they buy homes and property, for cash, in any condition. These companies and have a culpability in the housing boom that has helped bring us to this point by throwing up shoddy housing developments with ostensibly cheap houses that are a terrible blight on the urban landscape. Oh, and, as those of us educated enough to notice all the fine print will see, these little boxes are often sold with predatory adjustable rate mortgages and are no, in fact, 'cheap' in cost, only in quality. In short, I am not condoning the vandalism and theft of these particular mortgage defaulting no-longer-homeowners, for indeed in most states the stove they are selling belongs to the bank. HOWEVER, I do not feel much sympathy for the bank or the predatory development companies that will buy these mortgages from the bank, because they have helped to create this situation. They aren't going to lose their homes over a couple thousand dollars in damages. In fact, the CEO of Citibank won't even lose his summer home over it. Remember, that the 'victims' of this vandalism are not small time landlords. They are the institutions who, were they to possess a moral compass, would never have given these mortgages in the first place.

And the b) part is an important issue, when you consider what is and is not covered in the media. Of course it is part of the 'story' of the mortgage crisis, and it should be covered, but given all that is not covered by the media, I have gotten very interested lately in what is, and what function this selection serves. Maybe it is all the schadenfreude, maybe it's 'defaulter fatigue', or maybe it is that increasing rare instance in which our news media (not to single out the WSJ at all) is trying to give a balanced picture. I think it is something more, though.
It is my strong belief that people feel affirmed by stories like this one for the same reason so many people liked stories about crime and Katrina refugees (many of which were also overblown and decontextualized). These stories allow "us" to excuse the system by thinking, in some way, however small, that it is not such a travesty that these people have lost their homes, because as it turns out,they are petty, vindictive people who aren't taking responsibility for their own mistakes, but instead stealing and vandalizing. What this story serves to do is quiet that impulse in moral humans such as ourselves that says "This crisis came about for a reason, and there are many culpable parties, BUT I DO NOT THINK THAT I WANT TO LIVE IN A SOCIETY THAT IS ABOUT MAKING MONEY BY TAKING ADVANTAGE OF OTHERS, WHERE THE SUPER-RICH GET SUPER-RICHER OFF PEOPLE LOSING THEIR HOMES, A COUNTRY THAT IMPOSES INCENTIVES FOR 'THIRD WORLD' NATIONS TO HALT THEIR AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES, AND THEN PUTS THEIR FOOD IN OUR GAS TANKS." The media's emphasis on stories like this quiet our impulse to call for actual, substantial change in how we are in the world, as a nation and as individuals. Let's not quiet that.