PITTSBURGH — The condition of a house in Pittsburgh’s Bon Air section has neighbors complaining and demanding something be done.
When Channel 11 went to the house on Friday, garbage was piled high, windows broken with others boarded up and the top of the chimney crashed into the yard next door, where Eileen Stack and her sister live.
“This has been here over a year, a couple years,” said Stack. “We thought a bomb went off. It’s falling on our property. The weeds are never kept. There are rats in the back.”
Stack said that while the house on Conniston Avenue looks vacant, an elderly man lives inside.
“If it’s this bad on the outside, I can imagine what it’s like on the inside. I don’t think anybody should have to live like that. It’s sad,” said Stack.
Stack and her sister both suffer from lupus with her sister nearly bedridden because of the disease.
Calling the house a nuisance and health hazard, the sisters have been fighting to get help for more than a year.
“I’ve contacted the mayor, city health department and councilwoman Rudiak’s office,” said Stack. “We’re definitely being ignored. It’s horrible. I hate to sit outside in the yard. [I’m] embarrassed.”
Stack also said she is worried about the man living in the house, who did not answer the door when Channel 11’s Jodine Costanzo visited on Friday.
Frustrated, Stack contacted Channel 11 for help to find answers about what can be done and why, so far, nothing has been done.
“You park on the street on street-cleaning day and get a ticket immediately, yet this house can stand here forever. [It] doesn’t make any sense,” said Stack.
Costanzo contacted several agencies for answers on Friday.
Building inspectors told Costanzo that they have cited the homeowner and are also contacting the Pennsylvania Department of Aging to get the elderly man help.