Imagine you've bought your dream house, just a block from the beach. You can walk to the Crow's Nest or to Twin Lakes Beach.
All around are family homes and cute bungalows, selling for top dollar.
But right in the center of the neighborhood is this rotting, abandoned house, where if the bad paint isn't enough, it looks as if people are using it for a garbage dump.
This is 825 Carmel Street at the corner of Ninth, just a block from Twin Lakes Beach.
Ow.
Neighbors have reported it to the county, but Code Compliance Investigator Kevin Fitzpatrick says there is nothing he has been able to do.
"If it becomes a public nuisance, we can board it up," he says. "But then people would be looking at a boarded-up house."
Fitzpatrick says he has tried to find the owners, with no success. The original owners died and there was a trust, but the attorneys in charge of it are no longer associated and have no information about who owns it now.
He says he'd like to have the county go in and clean it up, but the county can't afford to lay out the money and not have it returned.
"I can't spend county funds on something I know I can't recover," he says. "If the neighbors wanted to, they could come clean it up. No one would charge them with theft. They'd have to get a Dumpster."
Fitzpatrick has the county attorney trying to track down the home owner but has had no luck. Meanwhile, it's sat vacant for years, a blight on the neighborhood and an irritation to the neighbors in an otherwise spectacular group of family homes and summer rentals.
There are rats and skunks hanging out around the place, which the county can do something about, says Fitzpatrick, if they are reported. You can report them here.
If you have an eyesore in the county, you can report it here, too.
