Overflowing Gutters Irk Neighbor
CHICAGO (CBS)—For one Chicago woman, the first snow of winter strikes fear and frustration and serves as a reminder that another season of icy pavement and ignored complaints has arrived.
Nancy Rizzo lives next door to a house she hates.
"It's a nightmare," Rizzo says as she crunches through the snow "A living nightmare."
The problem isn't the snow, but her neighbor's gutters. They're so wide, she says, that they hang over her property.
A hazardous situation arises when snow covers the streets and sidewalks and fills the gutter that Rizzo says usually clogs.
Rizzo worries about the icicles that hang from the gutters.
"They're huge," she said. "I have to walk in here to make sure they don't hit me."
And there's the ice that forms from melting snow.
"Sometimes I've gotten up to two inches of ice," she said. "It's horrible living like this."
She's been living like this for years. She has pictures of the buckets of water that collects when it rains.
Letters lawyers have written to the neighbors asking them to fix the gutters have gone ignored.
Today, the neighbors ignored knocks from CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker.
Rizzo says attempts to call the city for help have been fruitless, even though building inspectors cited the owners of the building for "broken gutters" in 2015 and again in May, August and October of this year.
"No one's done anything," she said. "They just ignore it like it's no big deal."
City officials say when they inspected the home it wasn't raining or snowing, so they only issued violations for bad gutters.
"I'm just trying to protect my property," she said.
It's unclear why the city hasn't taken action against the owners of the building, but a spokesperson for the city suggested Rizzo take video of the hanging icicles and icy pavement and make another appointment with inspectors.
The building is currently in foreclosure, CBS 2 reports.
