Ravenswood Neighbors Ask City to Act on Blighted House

An all but abandoned house in the Ravenswood neighborhood that was the scene of a bizarre burglary in late May and discovered to be home to no one but raccoons now is a "top level" concern, according to city officials.

Neighbors say it is about time.

The unkempt appearance of the home at 415 N. 89th St. has generated a slew of complaints to the city for nearly a decade, with little result. The critters took up residence after the owner, 49-year-old Christina Mouradian, moved out about two years ago.

“The house is just completely abandoned,” said Ronald Crump, who lives next door at 421 N. 89th St.

After the burglary, neighbors renewed their complaints with city health and property inspectors, and elected officials. Three weeks later, neighbors say few of their calls have been returned, which makes them worry the problem property and its owner will somehow again be given a pass.

The address is well known to the city. Crump described years of "turmoil" that generated likely "hundreds of police calls" to his neighbor's house. City property maintenance inspector Gregg Blando said he has "orders going back for some time ... and I have even had the owner in court."

Despite the repeated turmoil, ongoing property neglect and related complaints and notices of code violations, little changed at the home, neighbors said. When Mouradian moved out, they said, things quieted down while the property’s deterioration flared up.

Home recently burglarized

The home’s abandoned state and help himself to 45 Spanish figurines valued at up to $500 apiece. The 55-year-old Milwaukee man was arrested for burglary June 1, after his wife turned him in first to Milwaukee police, who then turned the case over to Wauwatosa police.   

It took Wauwatosa police seven days to find the absentee victim, who lives with her parents in West Allis. Mouradian told police she was content with getting her figurines back and would not press charges, saying that "everybody deserves a second chance and she did not wish him to get into trouble.”

Although neighbors know there are extenuating personal circumstances driving the past decade of neglect of the house, they also say Mouradian has had more than her fair share of second chances to care for and tidy her home and lot. Mouradian didn’t return Patch’s calls.

The recent attention to Mouradian's property prompted someone to make calls on her behalf. A real estate agent taking photos of the home on Friday said he was asked by a friend of the family to evaluate the property for a possible sale. His cursory evaluation is that the home is a "tear down."

Telltale signs of neglect are obvious to passers-by. A banged up front storm door is ajar. City garbage and recycling bins and an old television sit midway in the driveway, untouched for weeks. A toppled child's plastic basketball hoop is visible at the back corner of the house, where it has lain for seven years, according to a neighbor who can view it from her kitchen window across the street. Exterior window frames are rotting. Eaves on the front roof line of the detached garage have rotted through, leaving gaping holes in the overhang.

Is home a safety hazard?

Neighbors’ chief concern: The deteriorating exterior condition of the home is a health, safety and security risk for immediate neighbors and the neighborhood overall. Their chief complaint: Repeated requests for help from the city over the past decade seem unheeded as the problems persisted.

"It would be different if this ... hadn’t been happening for 10 years,“ Crump said. “It just seems like we've exhausted people to talk to, and it appears nothing has been done about it. The thing that is most disappointing is it just doesn't seem anyone cares."

Blando said he has again issued Mouradian with another notice of property maintenance code violations, a required first step before the city can take more aggressive action to gain compliance through a citation process.

"I'm calling what she's got going on over there debris," Blando said. "We will be doing citations shortly. ... This has escalated to a top level of concern."

Blando said he understands neighbors’ “biggest concern and fear ... is it's vacant. The second most critical thing, with the (effect on) property values and all that, is the critters."

Blando said the critters issue is a matter for the health department. The city health inspector and health department director did not return Patch’s calls. Neighbors said their recent contact with the health inspector since the burglary was frustrating, “almost like we are inconveniencing him.”

“We pay taxes for certain departments and for certain people to do those things,” Crump said. Once a contact is made, he said, as has been the case time and again regarding the condition of his neighbor’s home and property, “you feel like they should take it from there.”

The situation at 415 N. 89th St. is similar to one that surfaced at 1737 Underwood Ave. a few years ago, which took years to resolve, said Nancy Welch, community development director who oversees the building and safety division, including property maintenance inspection.

“Every so often we have special concern homes,“ Welch said. “A property like this is a blip on the radar for several departments.“

Until the burglary call, police have not been called to the house since 2008, said Wauwatosa Police Lt. Gerald Witkowski, the department’s public information officer. Two of the three 2008 police calls were for the same municipal warrant for city ordinance violations, he said. Mouradian satisfied the warrant, Witkowski said, and, based on the limited police activity within the past three years, “there is nothing that we would say is a nuisance property there.”

City officials to seek solutions

Welch said she and other department heads from the city’s health, legal and police departments will meet this week to discuss a collective approach to the issues at the home.

“We want to be able to target the best way to proceed to get the problem resolved,” Welch said. “Our goal here is not punishment, but compliance.”

The process, Welch said, takes time, particularly since “there has been some contact, but she has some special difficulties that are affecting her ability to respond.”

“At the end of the day, I don’t want any ill will for her. I just want the eyesore taken care of. To me, it’s a health hazard,” Crump said.

Crump said he and other neighbors often helped Mouradian when she was living in the home, mowing the untended lawn and, several years ago, offering to help her clean out the mounding clutter inside her garage and home.

“We tried to be good neighbors,” Crump said. "To this day, if she came over and asked to borrow my lawn mower, I would help her, because that's the right thing to do."

But there are some things neighbors can't do – like enforce city property maintenance, health and public nuisance codes.

In the recent burglary report, police describe the home as uninhabitable:

“Every room was full of property that was scattered round. There was barely enough room to walk through the house due to the amount of property in it. The home had cobwebs on the walls and ceilings and did not appear to be currently lived in. ... While I was at the house, I heard the sounds of raccoons running around in the attic. I was unable to secure the residence because the lock on the side door did not work. ...

“The home did not appear inhabitable. There was no electricity. The home was cluttered with hoards of property. Due to all the clutter, there was no access to any of the bathrooms.”

Although the recent nearly three-year span has been the longest period Mouradian has been an absentee homeowner, there have been other periods when the home sat vacant. Court records show Mouradian was arrested and found guilty of her third operating while intoxicated offense in 2007, and was ordered to spend 90 days at a Huber facility. In 2000, her second OWI offense landed her in Huber for 60 days.

The storied history of the home and its goings-on “just breaks your heart," said one longtime neighbor. “She kept talking about cleaning the house ... (but) nothing was ever done.”

Neighbors said the home has been on the brink of foreclosure at least twice, and city tax records show 2007 and 2008 tax bills for the property were delinquent until both years were paid in full in January 2010.

City urges patience

Though disheartened with the city's history in responding to complaints about Mouradian’s property, neighbors hope this time will be different. City officials say neighbors still will need to be patient.

“We don't have the ability to simply go in and take this woman's property form her simply because the neighbors don't like the way she is maintaining it," Welch said. “This is someone’s home and this is someone’s property ... and it hasn‘t been completely abandoned because there are on and off appearances” by the homeowner.

“It’s never a fast enough process” for neighbors living next to a problem property, said city attorney Alan Kesner said. “We’re doing everything we can ... but our tools are not as powerful as we would like them to be.”

That Mouradian's home became a local news story involving other police jurisdictions and prompting several neighbors to call city officials instead of just one at any given time might prove to be the impetus needed to get some lasting change at 415 N. 89th St., according to neighbors.

“It’s bigger than a couple of good citizens,” Crump said. “I have compassion for her ... but that still does not dismiss what the neighbors have had to put up with for the last eight to 10 years. She appears to violate every good neighbor policy that there is."