In October, the city of Lorain hired Euclid’s ANT Professional Services, 27051 Drakefield Ave., to help beautify the city and clean up abandoned lots.
After a successful round of trash pickups, the city went back to the well, once again calling on ANT to continue its citywide cleanup efforts.
Maggie Haas, operations manager at ANT, along with city housing inspectors Juan Cortez-Ruiz and John Berrios, started their second round of efforts near 506 W. 18th St. in Lorain.
Haas said that there are quite a few locations on the list this time.
“We’re picking up all the debris that’s been abandoned at this lot,” she said. “We also do occupied homes where owners and tenants have excessive trash and debris in their yard.
“They’ve been notified by the city plenty of times to clean it up, and they haven’t cleaned it up.”
The owners of the occupied lots get plenty of prior warning, according to Berrios.
Oftentimes, the initial warnings are sent out a month in advance, before the city contracts ANT to step in, he said.
If lot owners do not with the warnings, lots are cleaned and the property will have a lien as part of its annual property taxes, Berrios said.
The city has a “clean and lien” program built into its ordinances, he said.
“Every property that we go to, it varies; (this lot) has been like this, that we are aware of, it’s been six weeks or more,” Berrios said of the West 18th Street property. “We clean up the property, and then we lien the property.”
Most of the properties that ANT works on are four-man jobs, according to Haas.
She said the crew she brings along sometimes get four different properties cleared in a day.
It varies on the amount of debris they have to clean up per lot, Haas said.
“We got rid of over 300 tires that were abandoned (in our first round),” she said. “We got rid of eight tons of garbage, in addition to the 300 tires.
“The garbage is just on the ground, so it’s up to our guys to bag it up again. We haul it out of here, and it goes to a dump.”
For occupied property, Berrios said the city is understanding if the owners are elderly or do not have the finances to get everything cleaned up.
While the city inspectors are willing to work with the homeowners, Berrios noted there are some properties that are too far gone to fix up.
“We work with them; we try to give them the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “But, there’s times where it’s just so bad, that really the only thing you can do is just knock it down and have people leave.”
Concerned citizens looking to report abandoned lots near them can contact the city of Lorain, Berrios said.
The city’s Building, Housing and Planning Department can be reached at cityoflorain.org.
