New subject: PROP help needed with rental nightmare at 1208 Brighton Road

14 Sep 2011

Dear Officer Kryskowiak,
My neighborhood desperately needs your help with a badly troubled rental
property at 1208 Brighton Road. I am hoping this is something that can be
addressed through the PROP ordinance, if not criminal statutes.
This afternoon I found a terribly emaciated pit bull dog and another less
emaciated one wandering the intersection of Millbank Street and Brighton
Road; I managed to get the badly emaciated one to my yard and called Animal
Control. Officer Barham came out and got the dog from me, and then I took
him around the corner to the rental property at 1208 Brighton Road where the
dogs lived and where the other loose dog was in the yard menacing passersby.
What Officer Barham and I found there was extremely upsetting. Besides the
loose dog, which was extremely skittish and borderline aggressive, there was
a crate of skinny puppies on the back porch and -- worst of all -- another
adult pit bull very near death from emaciation lying in the shade of a
neighbors' car. The yard is as always full of trash, and the smell there is
just awful. I just left Officer Barham a few minutes ago; he had seized all
of the dogs and was preparing to take the sickest one to be euthanized.
This is the same property I complained about to Mr. Robert Pearce at
Inspections back in June when the tornado damage to the home still had not
been addressed. Today there are still tornado-felled trees lying in the
backyard. I am pasting the relevant portion of my June 24 e-mail to Mr.
Pearce at the bottom of this e-mail so you have a copy of that; I would be
happy to send you the full text if that would be helpful. Mr. Pearce is
copied on this e-mail.
I find it very disturbing that this property is on Inspections' radar screen
but is allowed to be in the state that we found it today.
This house is owned by K & E Properties LLC.
Here is the link to the property information from the Wake County tax
records: http://bit.ly/nOY35K
Here is the information about the corporation from the N.C. corporations
databases; the registered agent and manager is one Lucy Dixon at 5204
Rembert Drive in Raleigh: http://bit.ly/nOY35K
It is time for the city authorities to take serious action to remove this
blight from our midst. Please let me know what can and will be done.
Sincerely,
Sue Sturgis
2119 Millbank St.
Cell: 919-841-3058
*Here is the relevant portion of my June 24 e-mail to Mr. Pearce in
Inspections:*
*The wider problem on this block: *This block of Brighton Road is becoming
severely blighted due to irresponsible landlords. Mr. Schrader owns the
rental properties at 1217, 1209 and 1205 Brighton Road ... However, the
problems with Mr. Schrader's properties are dwarfed in comparison to what's
happening across the street at 1208 Brighton Road, a rental house is owned
by K & E Properties (here is the corporation's information, including
details about the managers:
http://www.secretary.state.nc.us/corporations/Corp.aspx?PitemId=5009141).
This property is a complete mess -- so bad that it's actually leading some
neighbors to consider moving to escape the blight.
The yard, which is filled with junk cars, is often covered -- and I mean
COVERED -- in trash. The tornado damage there still has not been addressed,
with broken pieces of the house still hanging off the front and a large
amount of tornado debris in the backyard. There are two pit bulls that are
kept tied up in the backyard on a short chain; neighbors have said they do
not have access to water and are kept there for long stretches in violation
of the anti-tethering ordinance. I am not in a place to witness the illegal
tethering, though I have met the dogs and am concerned about their
condition. I do not know if the neighbors have reported the issues to Animal
Control. There are young children living at this house, and I and other
neighbors are concerned about the conditions they're living in.