SETTING AN EXAMPLE?

Even though it could damage his bid for Mayor of Detroit, City Councilman Kwame Kenyatta and his wife packed up their belongings, locked the doors, mailed in the keys, and walked away — adding another vacant house to the thousands in a city hard hit by the nation’s mortgage crisis.

“We’re already underwater when it comes to what we’re paying on the house versus what the house is worth,” Kenyatta said.

“You don’t show leadership by walking away from your home in the city of Detroit. You have vandalism where they find out the houses are vacant. You have people stealing fireplaces,” said one of his neighbors.

Kenyatta, a Democrat, is not the only elected official facing mortgage trouble. The Wayne County prosecutor’s Detroit home has gone into foreclosure. And California Rep. Laura Richardson nearly lost her home before she paid up delinquent home loans.

Walking away from a mortgage isn’t illegal; the bank takes possession and tries to sell the house. But “it just puts more properties in foreclosures, and that’s the last thing we need right now. That’s just pulling the median sales price down,” said Karen Kage, who runs a real estate listing service in suburban Detroit.