City Howl Help Desk: Case of the Crummy Van

CITY Howl is a Web site that allows citizens to post their raves or rants about city services (see www.thecityhowl. com). Every Wednesday, we publish highlights of our investigations into some of these problems.

The problem: Rich Tana's neighborhood has been colonized by squirrels.

They've formed nests on air-conditioning units, broken into a house and generally been a nuisance to the inhabitants of the tidy rowhouses on Tana's South Philadelphia block.

Tana and some of his neighbors believe they know the source of the problem: A van that a neighbor is storing on a driveway in a shared alleyway behind their homes. The van's an eyesore and has flat tires and expired tags. The reason it attracts squirrels, though, is that for the past three years, the neighbor has been using the idle van to store bread, Tana said.

On a recent visit, the van was stacked to the brim with empty boxes of D'Ambrosio bread, and crumbs littered the floor. (The owner of the rowhouse where the van is parked didn't respond to attempts at contact.)

The squirrels and the truck are bad enough, but for Tana the most frustrating thing has been the city's response.

Tana worked as an inspector for the Department of Licenses and Inspections for 30 years. He was sure that the van was breaking the zoning code because it wasn't being maintained properly.

In an urban setting, what people do in their driveways can affect their neighbors, and the city code establishes a standard for car maintenance to prevent blight. (He also suspected that the vehicle was being used for commercial purposes, though it was stored on residential property.)

He sent his first complaint to his old department via its Web site in January 2008, according to city records. When nothing happened to either the van or the bread, and the neighbors' attempts to persuade the van's owner to move the vehicle failed, Tana took his complaint to 3-1-1.

The help line, he said, wasn't very helpful. Operators thought he was trying to report an abandoned car, and wanted to forward the matter to the police. When he explained that the van wasn't abandoned since it was on private property, and it was a zoning matter, they didn't seem to follow. He says that operators hung up on him several times before giving him a reference number for his call.

He then tried calling the mayor's office and was forwarded to an L&I supervisor, who, he said, also didn't give him a reference number. And so the van has sat, continuing to cause Tana and his neighbors aggravation.

What we did: We contacted the mayor's office and L&I about Tana's complaint.

Mayoral spokeswoman Maura Kennedy said she can't explain why Tana had so much trouble with 3-1-1 operators and the L&I supervisor, and called his experience "exceptionally unusual."

Bridget Collins-Greenwald, L&I's deputy commissioner of operations, acknowledged that L&I should have done more about the van complaints - especially given the problems it's been causing the neighbors.

After hearing complaints that squirrels had broken into the van owner's home, and were scratching on the party wall separating the houses, L&I sent inspectors out, she said. But the homeowner wouldn't grant them access to do a home inspection.

Collins-Greenwald said the department then decided to focus on the van, since it appeared to be the source of the problem, and citing it didn't require entrance into the property.

Though she said the van's owner always removed the bread before inspectors could get to the property, the vehicle was still unregistered and not up to code, as Tana said.

City records show that L&I cited the property in May for having an unregistered vehicle "in a state of major disassembly [or] repair." The department reinspected the property in September and again in October and found the van still there.

What L&I should have done at that point, Collins-Greenwald said, was refer the van to the Police Department for towing.

But that never happened, she said, because of a paperwork mistake: An inspector wrote that the property owner was moving toward compliance, though the van was still in the driveway.

So even after seven visits by inspectors to the property over two years, the neighborhood eyesore remained.

What happens next: In response to our call, Collins- Greenwald said she referred the van to the police's abandoned- auto task force for towing.

"It has taken absolutely, entirely too long" to get this resolved, she said.

When told about this development, Tana said he's happy the city is taking action but doubts that the van will actually be removed.

"If the police tow it, I'll be happy and surprised," he said.

- Anthony Campisi

Anthony Campisi reports for It's Our Money (www.ourmoneyphilly.com).

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