MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Neighbors in one Memphis subdivision have been frustrated dealing with a mountain of smelly trash left from a home foreclosure more than two weeks ago.
“There’s a lot of young kids that live in this neighborhood, and it was attracting animals, smells. It just isn’t sanitary by any means,” said Madison Snyder.
Snyder lives directly across the street from a foreclosed home on Crimmons Cove in Southeast Memphis and piles of trash, some personal items, and medical supplies left behind following the court-ordered eviction of a woman who lived there.
“They got everything out in one day, and then that night is when we had seen her kind of rummaging through everything, picking. I’m guessing sentimental things, hauling a few things off, and that’s the last time we’d seen her,” said Snyder.
This mess has caused concern and frustration for another neighbor who did not want to be identified.
It rained right after it got out there, so now everything is soaking wet. It’s moldy, we’re getting smells, we’re getting rodents, things like that. So it’s not pleasant,” said another neighbor.
“Getting transferred to person, to person, to person. No one giving us any direct answer an whether this was going to get cleaned up,” said Snyder.
On Friday, WREG found crews at the site working on cleaning up the property, not from the City, but from the new owner.
“This particular home got foreclosed on in March of this year, and then, as the owners of it, we bought it as it went into foreclosure. We have to go through the legal process to get possession,” said Ryan Tucker, owner of Enterprise Realtors.
He says that once that happened, the eviction followed.
An often complicated and lengthy legal process, which in this case took right at two and a half months, with previous owners given a certain amount of time to claim their property from what’s been removed from the house.
Tucker was notified by Code Enforcement on what steps needed to be taken, and within the deadline, and he understands why people who live in this neighborhood have been upset.
“Neighbors, if they don’t know who we are, if they haven’t met us, it can be very frustrating. They don’t know what process is going on…who’s going to be responsible for cleaning it up,” said Tucker.
Tucker told WREG he anticipates having the trash removed by the end of Friday and the home renovated within a month.
He said he has already invested over $11,000 and has yet to start rehabbing the house.