Great success!
Residents living next door to a dilapidated home in Los Angeles can finally breathe in peace after more than seven tons of foul-smelling trash was removed from the property on Thursday.
Dubbed a “garbage mansion,” the mansion, located in the affluent Fairfax neighborhood with a median home price of $3.42 million, has been the source of dozens of complaints over more than a decade.
Men in white hazmat suits, masks and construction hats swarmed the site to remove piles of white trash bags, while pests hiding in the rotting rubble quickly dispersed.
Mayor Karen Bass, City Councilwoman Katie Yaroslavsky and Department of Public Works officials urged immediate excavation after visiting the site this week.
Yaroslavsky revealed on Thursday that one ton of the trash removed was flammable and dangerous material.
“I’m very concerned about this gentleman who was living in these conditions,” Bass told reporters outside his home.
Previously, residents had complained about a moat of trash spilling into their driveways, overgrown vegetation and, most obviously, an unpleasant odor pervading the area.
“The situation is getting worse and worse, the smell is getting worse and I’ve noticed more flies and insects,” neighbor Rebecca Yale said. ABC7.
The Los Angeles Department of Building Safety deemed the property an “immediate public safety and health risk” around noon Wednesday.
Once given the go-ahead, a cavalcade of city workers immediately began removing trash from the yard, but the same could not be said for the inside of the house.
Los Angeles Police Department officers knocked, but the homeowner, identified by public records as Raymond Gaon, was nowhere to be found.
“It’s horrifying to think about what’s going on inside that house,” Bass added.
Gaon, who has lived on the property since the mid-1990s, was ordered to remove the trash in 2014, and three years later the city filed two misdemeanor criminal charges for noncompliance, but in 2019 he was ordered to remove the trash. The lawsuit was dismissed.
He is currently receiving mental health services as concerns for his welfare are a priority in the community.
“Is there anyone taking care of him? Because I’m worried about him,” Ale told the station.
“I think there’s a mental health issue going on for this house to get to this point.”
Neighbors suspect Gaon lives in an RV around the corner from the house and is simply using it as a place to dump things he collects.
His sister, Leah, told ABC 7 that she bought the property for her brother and wanted it back so she could fix it up.
“You can get it in good condition.”
She worries that without continued care, the house is doomed to forever become her brother’s dumping ground.
