RICHMOND -- The Richmond City Council was scheduled to take up an ordinance Tuesday night that would impose fines for the failure to maintain foreclosed properties. The fines could be as much as $1,000 a day.

Richmond Police have complained that foreclosed properties are a blight on the city. They've said that too often criminals can easily break into boarded up homes and move in as squatters. Then, police say, the abandoned homes turn into gathering places for drug users. In addition, the homes are trashed or become dumping grounds for trash.

Some residents of Richmond have taken it upon themselves to track down the owners of empty homes and try to make those owners clean up the properties. They say that blighted homes reduce property values.