Tough times on the west side

In the ten years since we've lived on the west side, the house next door has had a slew of tenants. Some of them leave after a month or two quietly. Others have had plenty of backyard drama with a lot of yelling and weapons being discharged. Who knows what else has gone on in there? Hydroponics and basement lights that were on 24/7? Various sizes of dogs sadly chained and penned up.

The most recent tenants had three kids. And they were kids who played a lot in the yard, made kid noise with balls going into our yard that I threw back because I always vowed to not be that neighbor, the ball keeper. One afternoon one of the urchins rigged up a skateboard as a swing in a tree. Trouble was, the tree is in my yard and having been a kid, that contraption would end with something breaking - and I'm not going to pay for that. Went over and met the mother of at least one of the kids, a fearful, once pretty young woman who may be in an overwhelming situation. She was quite apologetic when I went over and said my case, and the dangerous object was taken off my tree.

The last few weeks were tough. There was more yelling than usual and the police were on the front porch at least once. The backyard was a mess, with the kids using tires and an old crib we threw out that became co-opted as some form of fort. You have to give them credit for being creative.

Sometime during the day yesterday they were evicted.



Checked for court cases on the county website and confirmed that they were, in fact, evicted.



Really not keen with what was left behind for everyone to see though. Hope the kids are ok. You can find out a lot of sad, unfortunate things from the Clerk of Courts website.



This is the part I really do not like. The house has been trashed, gutted and who knows what is on the lawn. I heard some people out there earlier, throwing some of the crap into a pickup truck. If this is not cleaned up by Monday I will be calling the city to get the landlord to clean up this mess.