Inquirer: Vacant house causing trouble for neighbors in Phenix City

In Phenix City, out in the Ladonia area and just across the line in Lee County, there’s a house that’s causing trouble in an otherwise nice middle-class neighborhood.

A Concerned Reader called me about the house, which is next door to rental property he owns on Mill Pond Lane, which is just off of U.S. 80. It’s a tidy, well-kept neighborhood tucked away back off the highway and looks like a nice place to call home … except for one house.

It was obviously like its neighbors once, lap board siding with shutters on the windows, a small stoop in front and a wooden privacy fence around the backyard. From the street, you can see the overgrown front yard and, through a section of the privacy fence that’s been torn down, you can see a badly overgrown backyard.

Our Concerned Reader, who owns the house next door, says it’s making it tough to attract and keep tenants.

“It’s a bunch of teenage kids,” he said. “The police say they can’t do anything about it. They told me to call whoever owns the house and I did. I think it’s owned by the VA.”

He said the back door is “completely kicked in” and the kids who apparently use the house for God-knows-what have dragged a mattress into the house and punched holes in the walls and broke out windows. The carpet is totally shot, and who knows what condition the plumbing and HVAC situation is.

“I own the house next door and try to rent it,” he said. “I rented it to a young military couple, but they got so scared that they moved out in the middle of the lease.”

He said he’s spoken to the Phenix City building inspectors, who recently went out and looked over the house. They slapped a yellow sign up on the front stoop declaring that the house is unfit for occupation.

Our Concerned Reader said the inspector told him he would look into condemning the house.

“I think it’s been ready for demolition for a while, ever since kids started breaking into it,” our Concerned Reader said. “It used to be a good neighborhood. But when you have a place like that, the whole neighborhood goes to crap.”

I don’t know what the condemnation ordinance is in Phenix City, but in Columbus, city inspectors estimate what it would cost to bring the property back up to code and if it’s more than half the assessed value of the house, it’s eligible for the Big Red D, which they paint on it to declare it condemned.

Then it might be months or even years before it actually gets bulldozed and hauled off.

The house in question was valued at $92,610 in 2014, the latest numbers I could find online. But …

“Since I bought the house next door, the value has dropped about $30,000,” the Concerned Reader said.

We’ll keep an eye on the property and see if the city does something to help out these neighbors who are being held hostage by a vacant house and some teenage squatters.

This story was originally published August 7, 2016 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Inquirer: Vacant house causing trouble for neighbors in Phenix City."