Behind 1327 E: All Kinds of Mess

At 1327 E — obviously people moved out, and they just piled trash in the backyard. I've been calling the city. Harold Beckham was out here the other day, and said, "Oh, we're gonna take care of it — but you understand the process. We have to serve them, and if the city has to clean it up, they have to pay for it, and blah blah blah." So it's gonna sit there. We got rats, and all kinds of mess. Go take a look at it. You'll see the pile.

And you've called a lot, you said.

At least a dozen times. He was out this past Thursday, the 17th — big runaround: "Someone's gonna take care of it." Well, I've been calling for six weeks. What I do, to be honest, and you can put this in the newsletter, too: I call and say I'm other people. I make up names and make up addresses, just because the only way they respond is if more people call. So I just go down the row, and I say, "I'm calling from 423 13th St. I'm Mr. Jones, and there's trash in my alley, and there's drug dealers on the corner, and kids are pissing on my house, and everything else."

I mean, I've taken extreme measures. And I've put up all these lights up on the outside of my place that come on at night, to try to scare them, and I keep a bucket of water on the porch, so when they come out here to pee on the house, I dump it on them. They just come out of the liquor store, and they come over here and they urinate. And this girl that moved into this place is running some kind of — I don't know what goes on over there.

But there's kids out here all the time, and there's trash. And this alley has become a dumping area. People just throw things in this alley. It's just a matter of calling and calling and calling. But the guy [with the city] is Harold Beckham. For this Ward, he is what is called the sanitation education enforcer.

Would you be willing to sort of coordinate, if other people around here really care about —

— If other people are interested in helping out, absolutely. I [clean] once a week. I'm out here when I come home from work. And Mr. Lee's great. Him and his boys come out here and they clean up as much as they can. But it's a respect issue.

Well, thanks a lot for telling us about it.

Yeah, I've been meaning actually to get on the Web site and send something in to the newsletter. But by the time I get home every day — it's easier just to do it myself. That's the nature of the [contracting] business I'm in, too: I don't want to explain it to you — I'll just do it myself. §