With Oahu’s median home price now at $710,000 and the huge demand for livable housing in Hawaii, you’d think that no one could afford to waste real property by turning it into an uninhabitable dump site. Yet many of us have stories of trash houses in our own ZIP code.
The coverage of the final, triumphant cleaning of the infamous Kaimuki hoarder house brought the topic of squalid living conditions and neighborhood eyesores top of mind this summer. In employee break rooms around the islands, people put down their coffee mugs, leaned back in their chairs and said, “You should see the one in MY neighborhood!”
Stories were exchanged of garages packed to the rafters with oozing boxes and suburban yards with all manner of oddball vehicles in various stages of decomposition. Homes with piles of piles. Buffalo grass taller than any buffalo. Scary sounds coming from inside the bags.
Ray Peralta of Pacific Junk Removal, the company hired to do all the dirty work, says his business is booming, though he’s not able to trace that directly to the Kaimuki job. “I have been doing this for the last five years, and the demand for services has increased every year,” Peralta said. “As our population ages and families downsize due to relocation or death, we will continue to see an increase.”
That trash house down the street may have been festering for years, but suddenly, now that we’ve seen the before-and-after pictures from 2nd Avenue, there’s hope that something can be done.
Following the Kaimuki cleanup, the city Department of Planning and Permitting took a handful of calls from people wanting to know how bad is bad enough. “The callers were told if they had a specific complaint that the DPP would send an inspector to investigate the property,” said George Atta, director of DPP. “Only one of the callers provided an address, and we will investigate that complaint.”
If the trash house in your neighborhood is looking like what you’ve seen in the news, you can call the city. Even if it isn’t quite as bad, you can still call.
“Residents should not be afraid to report a suspected violation because all complainants remain anonymous,” Atta said. “Also, the severity of the litter and junk does not have to rise to the level of the 2nd Avenue home. … The DPP can issue violations for overgrowth and litter on a property under a different chapter in the Revised Ordinances of Honolulu.”
And if it’s you, if you’re the one with your “collection” piled in mounds and melting into the grass — if you think it doesn’t bother the neighbors, you’re wrong. It does. It really does.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
