Help my alley is cluttered with debris from a vacant house.?
Question:I have an alleyway that is blocked up with branches of trees, burnt fire debris, and cinder blocks from my backyard door all the way to the end of the alley. Who would you suggest I call or write a letter to about cleaning this up as it is unsafe and if I or anyone needed to go out into the alley to escape a fire, I would not be able to. Isn't every city supposed to have someone who takes care of these matters? I called the streets dept. as I live in Philadelphia and that's who I was told handles it, but they basically told me I had to clean that mess up myself which is impossible and unreasonable of them to think so. The city is responsible for vacant houses to be boarded up, so if the houses are falling apart and it's causing a hazard who cleans it up? Any help or suggestions greatly appreaciated.
Answers:
I looked it up for your apparently you can report the building as abandoned to the police and there is a specific section for fire damaged... so I would imagine that you can get advise from there as to what the next step is... I cant imagine you are held liable for someone else's home falling onto your property I would imagine you have a legal right to sue the owner to fix your property as it was not your fault. I am no lawyer so dont hold me to that... anyways I found a link for you that you can adress the building thats abandoned
http://www.ppdonline.org/pdf/abanpropert...
and there is a page that you can send a letter to the mayor and other such questions you may have for philly at this page
http://www.phila.gov/helpme/
good luck with the cleanup and give em hell for making your life unsafe
If that alleyway falls in your property line, then I would think it would be your responsibility to clean it up. I don't think the city will do anything about it. Call a junk removal company, and fork out the $$ or put on some work gloves and take care of it yourself.
Write, call, and email the Mayor's office regarding your failed attempts to rectify this matter with the streets dept. Also, verify that a separate city maintenance dept is no responsible for the clean up. Call Mayor's office every other day for 2 weeks unless problem is resolved prior to deadline. If no resolution after 2 weeks, write and email your local news stations (like Fox and such) to get your story some public attention. Trust me, big cities hate to be ridiculed on television, especially for such a small effort on their part. Good luck!
as for the branches of trees you can call your local police station and get a day permit to burn it. I don't know if you can do that because it's an alley, but it's worth finding out. The blocks I would try to call a cinder block company in Philly and see if they would pick them up. If there not in bad shape you could always sell them and make a little money. good luck!
Clean it up yourself after documenting the extent of the debris.
Send your bill for this service and reasonable expenses to the property owner.
Send the bill to collection, and register it as a lien on the property.
Eventually the property will change hands, and your lien will have to be settled before the new deed can be registered.
Pay some teens this summer to bag up all the debris. Buy gloves and bags. Problem solved.
More Related Questions & Answers...