Vacant lot owners angered at what homeless leave behind

Owners of vacant lots have to clean up behind people who use their property as camping sites, an out-of-town property owner found out recently.

After a neighbor complained in September that a homeless person was living on a Fall Street lot and using part of it as a toilet, the Carson City Health Department located the owners and required them to clean up the lot.

"We do respond to those complaints. It's against city ordinance to permit any kind of a garbage buildup because it becomes a public health nuisance," said Christi Smith, public health nuisance inspector.

"In this case, we found no indication of anyone living there and no evidence that someone had been defecating there.

"But we did locate the correct owners and issued a notice of violation of a specific ordinance and gave them a number of days to correct it. The owners arranged to have it cleaned up."

Athena Maita, whose family owns North Carson Street apartments next to the lot, wrote in September to the City Manager's Office, Sheriff's Department and Fire Department, complaining about the smell from the lot and accumulation of flammable materials. Several of the apartment tenants signed the complaint as well, she said.

"It took a while, but then the health department called me to apologize about the delay. They went over and took pictures of it and by mid-October it had been cleaned up," Maita said.

Smith said owners of unoccupied property are often aware that someone may be occupying the property, but if someone is defecating there or leaving household garbage and creating a health hazard, the owners are responsable for removing the occupants and cleaning up the property.

Sometimes that means getting the cooperation of law enforcement, she said.

But Smith said complaints like Maita's are infrequent.

"I really don't know how we compare to other communities, but I rarely run across it at my end," Smith said. More often someone complains that garbage is accumulating at a home, particularly rental units, because Carson City does not have mandatory garbage pickup.