*It’s not unusual to find vacant dwellings filled with trash and stained carpets, said Al Neilson of Neilson Construction Cleanup Services in San Diego. Neilson has repaired bank-owned homes during several sales downturns. Cabinets often are missing, he said. Sometimes even the toilets and bathtubs have been removed.
“I would say 50 percent of the houses get trashed,” Neilson said. The evicted homeowners “are discouraged about how the system has let them down.”
**Recently, an MHS repairman found out just how angry displaced homeowners can be. He couldn’t find a house he was sent to work on in Yucaipa, even with the aid of a GPS navigation system. Finally, he realized he was in the right place, but the house was no longer there. “He called and said, ‘I know I am in front of the right house, but somebody has knocked it down,’ ” Kerr said. “Someone took a skip loader and knocked the house down. It was in a big pile.” When he reported the incident, Kerr expected bank representatives to be upset, but “it wasn’t like they even raised an eyebrow.” That’s probably because there are so many foreclosures, he said. Lenders are overwhelmed “and the work keeps coming.”
***Sometimes repair crews feel threatened, Kerr said. Recently, someone threw a brick through an MHS vehicle’s window while the driver was inside a home, he said. Another MHS worker was changing the locks on a dwelling in Lancaster when “one of the neighbors called the person who had owned the house.” The former owner used his car to block the MHS truck in the driveway. Unable to leave, Kerr’s employee “just went to his car and called the police. They came about two hours later.”
