Foreclosure Cleanouts and Illegal Dumping
To the editor:
There should be an article about this problem. Honest. Neighbors celebrating the fact the house is getting some much needed love and attention may not know that the company hired to do the cleanuout isn’t always a reliable company.
Antioch is a victim of not so honest people doing foreclosure cleanouts that then illegally dump all the trash on the back roads in Antioch (instead of hauling the trash to the dump and paying like they are supposed to).
The lastest one I had to deal with came from a house on West 6th Street that was then dumped near a water source on McElheney Road. It took 5 people over 3 hours to clean up.
Impossible to track down who did it with the limited resources at hand. When I do get an address, and I usually do, they are, of course, bank-owned. But someone associated with the foreclosed home hired somebody to clean it out and the cleanout crew decided to keep all the money and illegally dump it instead.
I do not have the resources nor does the City to follow up every time this happens I do have pictures of what was recently dumped on McElheney Road by what we believe was one of these trash cleanout companies. Yet another side of foreclosures, unfortunately.
Neighbors need to take notice. If you see a trash cleanup at a foreclosed house, get the license plate number or take a picture or ask for a business card.
R.C. Ferris
What good would it do? I reported a dumping in progress to the non-emergency line and the dispatch referred to an 800 number where you can report dumping cleanups instead of sending out someone from APD to investigate. I think our police force does have the ability to look into this, but haven’t made it a priority. A lot of times dump site includes mail with the address on it, near the Fulton Shipyard I saw a boat that had serial numbers on it and if they fingerprinted they probably could get a few leads. Once they made it know that they intended to enforce the laws people might do it less and the problem would start to go away. It may take more legwork to do it this way, but it would be a lot more effective and appreciated compared to citing residents with code violations for having an unkept lawn.