East County Officers Battle to Bust Blight
By Corey Lyons
Contra Costa Newspapers
Aug. 19, 2001
ANTIOCH -- Ryan Graham steered his Ford Taurus along a bumpy stretch of West 10th Street, his eyes scanning rows of working-class houses ringed by cyclone fences.
"Community pride," he said to no one in particular, "is kind of a lost theory."
Graham, a code enforcement officer in Antioch, pulled over near a curb to inspect a ramshackle trailer behind a house in which people are living illegally. He snapped photos with a digital camera.
A few minutes later, he consulted with an Antioch police officer out on the street.
"I'll come back tomorrow and post this," he said, pointing to the trailer, "as uninhabitable."
Many older neighborhoods in East County, plagued by criminal activity and poverty, become pockets for blight. But with scores of families moving into the region in search of larger and more affordable homes, police and code enforcement officers are trying to clean up East County's hardscrabble image, one illegal dwelling or abandoned Firebird at a time.
It has created a cultural collision of suburban expectations and old, country-paced habits.
"People call me all the time and say, What do you want this place to look like, Walnut Creek?' Well, yeah," said Denise Skaggs, coordinator of Antioch's Neighborhood Improvement Services.
This tiny arm of the city government investigates blight, which includes a startling variety of images, shapes, smells and hazards.
Common cases include a garage converted into a bedroom, stockpiles of front-yard rubbish, vehicles on the street without registration, exposed wires, and 5-foot-high weeds sprouting skyward and bringing down the neighborhood.
Some cases require 100 or more hours of work; others less than 10 minutes.
Skaggs and Graham, a former Antioch police officer, form the two-person code enforcement squad. They work directly with police and community leaders. They handle about 40 inspections each day. They wince, laugh and cry, not necessarily in that order.
They received one call from a startled neighbor who reported seeing someone pitching feces out of a window. When officers arrived to investigate, they found an elderly couple living in a house waist-deep in collectibles and debris.
The husband, it turned out, couldn't make the perilous trek from the bed to the bathroom. So he tossed his waste out a nearby window. Officials filled an entire trash bin with belongings to clear a path from the bed to the toilet, Graham said.
"On one hand, we come out and see people who clean up their mess by the time we're leaving their street," said Graham, an Oakley resident. "But we also deal with people who (have) lived a certain way for 100 years and will live the same way for the next 100 years.
"It's hard to change a life," he added.
As suburban sprawl reaches the bucolic foothills, East County's renewed commitment to erase public eyesores reflects the rapid change among its people.
These days, for instance, it's not OK to pull the transmission out of a Camaro and dump the parts in the front yard. Folks who spent $380,000 on a house in the same neighborhood will undoubtedly complain -- loudly.
"We want to protect the assets of these communities," said Skaggs, who lives in Antioch. "It's about property revenue. It only takes one house in one neighborhood to drop the value."
Now, code enforcement officers regularly cruise neighborhoods in Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley and Pittsburg.
Statewide, about 1,300 code enforcement officers track down safety hazards and public nuisances, according to the California Association of Code Enforcement.
Cities across the East Bay are cracking down on neighborhood blight, which drives down property values and turns away prospective buyers and businesses.
But reversing a history of neglect and decay in parts of East County has required a considerable effort between city officers and homeowners, which is why code enforcement is often a time-consuming process.
Antioch officers start with a courtesy notice, in which they state the violation and give residents 10 days to respond. After that, officers survey the neighborhood in which the violation occurred and cite other properties if necessary.
The letters become increasingly threatening until, in extreme cases, a lien is filed against the property. The final abatement letter nearly always elicits a response.
"At this point, if we must, we'll get a contractor and abate the property -- It will cost you the abatement, plus 35 percent to cover administrative costs," Skaggs says.
Graham, on a recent afternoon, drove along Filbert Street. He passed endless rows of rich, green, manicured lawns. He turned right onto Beechnut Court, and immediately spotted his target: a front yard overflowing with drying weeds, jutting into the sky.
He stepped out of his car to post a note on the door. Next door, he noticed a fence under construction, with boards lying across the driveway.
"There's not a lot I can do there," he said, surveying the scene. "There's some new wood there. I'll make a mental note. I'll be back in 10 days to check their progress."
Contra Costa Newspapers
Aug. 19, 2001
ANTIOCH -- Ryan Graham steered his Ford Taurus along a bumpy stretch of West 10th Street, his eyes scanning rows of working-class houses ringed by cyclone fences.
"Community pride," he said to no one in particular, "is kind of a lost theory."
Graham, a code enforcement officer in Antioch, pulled over near a curb to inspect a ramshackle trailer behind a house in which people are living illegally. He snapped photos with a digital camera.
A few minutes later, he consulted with an Antioch police officer out on the street.
"I'll come back tomorrow and post this," he said, pointing to the trailer, "as uninhabitable."
Many older neighborhoods in East County, plagued by criminal activity and poverty, become pockets for blight. But with scores of families moving into the region in search of larger and more affordable homes, police and code enforcement officers are trying to clean up East County's hardscrabble image, one illegal dwelling or abandoned Firebird at a time.
It has created a cultural collision of suburban expectations and old, country-paced habits.
"People call me all the time and say, What do you want this place to look like, Walnut Creek?' Well, yeah," said Denise Skaggs, coordinator of Antioch's Neighborhood Improvement Services.
This tiny arm of the city government investigates blight, which includes a startling variety of images, shapes, smells and hazards.
Common cases include a garage converted into a bedroom, stockpiles of front-yard rubbish, vehicles on the street without registration, exposed wires, and 5-foot-high weeds sprouting skyward and bringing down the neighborhood.
Some cases require 100 or more hours of work; others less than 10 minutes.
Skaggs and Graham, a former Antioch police officer, form the two-person code enforcement squad. They work directly with police and community leaders. They handle about 40 inspections each day. They wince, laugh and cry, not necessarily in that order.
They received one call from a startled neighbor who reported seeing someone pitching feces out of a window. When officers arrived to investigate, they found an elderly couple living in a house waist-deep in collectibles and debris.
The husband, it turned out, couldn't make the perilous trek from the bed to the bathroom. So he tossed his waste out a nearby window. Officials filled an entire trash bin with belongings to clear a path from the bed to the toilet, Graham said.
"On one hand, we come out and see people who clean up their mess by the time we're leaving their street," said Graham, an Oakley resident. "But we also deal with people who (have) lived a certain way for 100 years and will live the same way for the next 100 years.
"It's hard to change a life," he added.
As suburban sprawl reaches the bucolic foothills, East County's renewed commitment to erase public eyesores reflects the rapid change among its people.
These days, for instance, it's not OK to pull the transmission out of a Camaro and dump the parts in the front yard. Folks who spent $380,000 on a house in the same neighborhood will undoubtedly complain -- loudly.
"We want to protect the assets of these communities," said Skaggs, who lives in Antioch. "It's about property revenue. It only takes one house in one neighborhood to drop the value."
Now, code enforcement officers regularly cruise neighborhoods in Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley and Pittsburg.
Statewide, about 1,300 code enforcement officers track down safety hazards and public nuisances, according to the California Association of Code Enforcement.
Cities across the East Bay are cracking down on neighborhood blight, which drives down property values and turns away prospective buyers and businesses.
But reversing a history of neglect and decay in parts of East County has required a considerable effort between city officers and homeowners, which is why code enforcement is often a time-consuming process.
Antioch officers start with a courtesy notice, in which they state the violation and give residents 10 days to respond. After that, officers survey the neighborhood in which the violation occurred and cite other properties if necessary.
The letters become increasingly threatening until, in extreme cases, a lien is filed against the property. The final abatement letter nearly always elicits a response.
"At this point, if we must, we'll get a contractor and abate the property -- It will cost you the abatement, plus 35 percent to cover administrative costs," Skaggs says.
Graham, on a recent afternoon, drove along Filbert Street. He passed endless rows of rich, green, manicured lawns. He turned right onto Beechnut Court, and immediately spotted his target: a front yard overflowing with drying weeds, jutting into the sky.
He stepped out of his car to post a note on the door. Next door, he noticed a fence under construction, with boards lying across the driveway.
"There's not a lot I can do there," he said, surveying the scene. "There's some new wood there. I'll make a mental note. I'll be back in 10 days to check their progress."
posted by Corey at 9:23 PM
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