Another case of disrespect

by Diana Nelson Jones/March 2

There are many worse cases of blight than the vacant house at 229 Fisk St. in Lawrenceville. Many vacant properties have caused their neighborhoods discomfort for as long.

But it represents well the lack of progress within the system.  

It's a nice, solid house that is sliding. It has peeling paint and a leaning chimney. Neighbors say they have seen rodents and a dead bird. Phone books sit piled on the porch and circulars that escape in the wind get caught in the overgrowth along with litter and other debris.

Neighbors have been trying for 10 years to get the owners to cut weeds, shovel snow and maintain the property, none more vigorously than Tom Schoffstall.

He has a file that shows every call he has made to environmental services, every call for rodent control, to the Bureau of Building Inspection, the Department of Public Works, the Allegheny County Health Department. He chronicles the result of each call, each promise of getting back to him, each promise broken, each inspector who came out to take pictures and say yeah, that's not acceptable and then leave... and nothing changes.

The city has cited the property owner three times in the past few years, mostly for weeds. The citations have not resulted in any changes for the neighbors.

In February, the owner did not show up for a hearing in magistrate's court and it was postponed. Today in Magistrate Tony Ceoffe's court, the hearing was postponed again; a certified letter to the owner had come back unclaimed.  The owner now faces new fines. Mr. Ceoffe said that a first-class letter will be sent and that if it does not come back unclaimed, "we can assume service has been made. The next time there's going to be a hearing," he said, "there's going to be a hearing."

The owner, Frances Vitunac, is said to live in Fox Chapel. Vitunacs at the Fox Chapel and the Fisk street address are in the phone book but the numbers ring and ring; no machines.

Tom and other neighbors have written to the owners, asking them for the consideration and respect the Fox Chapel neighbors no doubt expect and get. Some have offered to buy the property.

No response. And yet Tom and his wife get a Christmas card every year from Ms. Vitunac.

Lots of people let properties go to ruin and degrade neighbors they don't have to deal with. The city takes the reports and sets its people in motion; fines get applied, maybe paid, but people keep disrespecting the neighborhoods and getting away with it. What's the civilized remedy for that?