'We Can't Live Like This': Junk Returns To Yard Of Granada Hills Home

GRANADA HILLS (CBSLA) — After what neighbors described as a few "blissful weeks" of looking at a clean yard in front of a Bircher Street home in Granada Hills, junk has once again started to accumulate.

"Three years of this and then you finally seem to be getting a solution to the problem, and then it just isn't," Les Claypool, a neighbor, said. "As soon as all those big bins went away, they started again."

The city spent $12,000 at the end of March to remove 21,000 pounds of trash and junk from home's front and back yards. Now, just three weeks later, discarded items have started to appear in front of the property.

"My concern: this is not going to stop," Sam Maldonian, a neighbor, said. "I blame the city. The city should be on top of this. We can't live like this."

Councilman John Lee was instrumental in getting the home cleaned up.

"I think that we all hoped by getting this property in a clean state, it might compel the owner to keep it in that condition," he said. "Unfortunately, that was not the case."

But it's not just the junk piling up that's concerning neighbors, it's the traffic that comes at all hours of the night.

Security video shows cars and trucks rolling up to the home, taking and leaving junk. The city says the homeowner's son has been running an illegal junkyard business from the driveway. He is due in court in August.

"My daughter, she moved out completely," Maldonian said. "She doesn't like the street anymore, says this is not safe, this the ghetto."

Lee said the homeowner has paid all of the fines associated with code violations, but said there was not much more the city can do until that hearing in August.

"The junk keeps coming and going and the traffic," a neighbor who wanted to remain anonymous said. "We need somebody to put a stop to it immediately."

Be sure to watch CBS2 news at 11 p.m. Thursday to go inside the mind of a person who hoards and hear from experts who say why cleaning up the home of a person who hoards will not fix the problem.