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What to do when no one seems to own the funky house next door

Built in the 1920s, the rowhouses in the 7400 block of Tulpehocken Street are sturdy and well-maintained. The small lawns are mowed, the hedges trimmed.

Built in the 1920s, the rowhouses in the 7400 block of Tulpehocken Street are sturdy and well-maintained. The small lawns are mowed, the hedges trimmed.

Neighbors such as Alice Brown, Patricia Major, and block captain Sylvester Pleasant pooled their money and paved the alley that runs behind their homes. Many also have purchased identical lampposts to spruce up their walkways.

Many have lived on this West Oak Lane block since Richard Nixon was in the White House.

But, alas, there's a problem, and it stinks worse than Watergate.

Especially on days when the temperature rises and the wind blows just right.

The stench wafts from the abandoned house on the corner of 75th and Tulpehocken. It's missing a second-floor back window. The back deck is jacketed in rust. A growing crack nearly bifurcates the front porch and inches toward Brown's property.

The garage door and a side door are breached and weather warped; the hedges are a shaggy green monster eating the sidewalk.

The house has been vacant for at least a decade, neighbors say.

But it's not like the neighbors could just call the city to put an end to the nuisance next door. The reason? No one can agree who owns it. City records say it's the feds. Federal records say that's not right.

Meanwhile, Brown gets the brunt of the funk. Not to mention the mice, which she believes have invaded from next door.

"I don't know whether it's animals or whatever it is, but it smells like something dead," said Brown, 74, seated in her dining room with five equally aggrieved neighbors whom she invited over on a recent rainy morning.

"Worse than mildew," clarified Major, 72, a retired Einstein Medical Center nurse.

The overgrown bushes on the side of the house became a drug stash spot for young dealers from nearby 75th Avenue and Walnut Lane this summer, said Pleasant, 67. He was among the neighbors who asked them to leave. He fears they could return.

"We need help, real bad," said Joseph Jones, 61, who lives across the street from Brown.

Spread out on her dining room table were years of notes documenting the local and state government offices and office-holders they've reached out to. They've had to be patient. Typically, a phone number is offered that leads to another number or a dead end. Phone messages aren't always returned.

Over the last several years, they've contacted the Police Department, Revenue Department, Office of Licenses and Inspections, Health Department, Water Department, and Air Management Services, among others.

But 7497 Tulpehocken remains as haunted as ever, seemingly untouchable by the bureaucracies that one would expect to come to the aid of taxpayers being victimized by a smelly, abandoned house.

"Philadelphia is not helping us, and neither are the politicians," said Brown, a retiree of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

"I've worked hard; I've called a lot of people, and everybody refers me to somebody else," she said. "There has to be a department somewhere that can enter that house."

Ethel Brown, who is 94 and has Alzheimer's disease, was literally run out of her daughter's house by the odor on a recent afternoon.

"She said, 'I've got to get out of this house, something is making me sick,' " Alice Brown recalled her mother saying. "So I gave her lunch outside. So, whatever is over there is something that really needs to be cleaned out."

On the surface, the dilemma faced by Brown and her neighbors appears to be an easy fix: Click on the city's website, phila.gov; look up and contact the owner of the abandoned house; and the owner should fix the problems.

City records show that the federal government's Department of Veterans Affairs owns the rowhouse. A deed for the property indicates that the VA purchased the house from the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office in 1985.

A spokeswoman for the VA, however, said the federal department sold the house in October 1985.

"It appears that VA sold the loan to the property through a . . . loan sale," VA public affairs officer Erica Dunbar said by email. "Since the property was sold, it appears VA has never reassumed ownership of this property."

By phone, Dunbar speculated that the buyer of the property in 1985 had failed to notify the city of the purchase.

"It is a buyer's responsibility to record a deed, and most buyers do for their own protection, but there is no requirement that a deed be recorded," Dunbar wrote.

Dunbar said the VA was researching to whom it sold the house, but did not know as of press time.

"It was 30 years ago," she said. "That's a long time."

Meanwhile, the city holds tight to the belief that the VA owns the property.

"How would we know who the buyer was if nobody told us?" asked a Department of Records employee on the first floor of City Hall.

Karen Guss, spokeswoman for the Department of Licenses and Inspections, said "it's a big problem in the city when people don't record the deed." L&I often times finds itself "between a rock and a hard place," she said, noting there are an estimated 13,000 vacant properties in the city.

That's little consolation to Brown and her neighbors.

Lauren Hitt, spokeswoman for Mayor Kenney, said city records indicate that in 2012 L&I took the VA to court after receiving neighborhood complaints about the property.

The court threw the complaint out, she said, because at the time the house was being maintained and appeared to be occupied.

"Neighborhood complaints had ceased, and so the case was dropped," she said.

In 2015, she said, the city received a call about conditions at the property, "so an inspector went out and did not find any violations at that time."

Earlier this year, she said, another call was received, complaining that the property was dangerous.

An L&I inspector inspected the house and determined that there were no structural defects, Hitt said.

Because of additional calls from neighbors in recent weeks, L&I inspectors are scheduled to go back to the house on Monday, Hitt said.

"We sincerely regret that the neighborhood has had to endure this. Sadly, blight and abandoned properties are all too frequent in Philadelphia and, as a result, L&I is forced to prioritize dangerous and imminently dangerous buildings - of which there are 5200 and 270, respectively," Hitt said.

After Monday's inspection, she said, the city will see if there are other agencies outside of L&I that can assist the neighbors more quickly.

"L&I needs to determine who the current owners of the property are," she said.

Brown and her neighbors are hopeful the public exposure of their frustration will end their nightmare once and for all.

"I don't want it torn down, because that's going to mess up my property," Brown said. "I would rather have it fixed up."

Etther White, 73, a retiree of the Defense Department who's lived on the block since 1969, agrees. "When we first came here, everything was so nice," she said. "So, one day this guy up and left, and we have all this burden now. We want it repaired and sold, because this is a nice neighborhood, as you can see. We put a lot into it."

deanm@phillynews.com

215-854-4172@mensahdean