- April 23, 2024
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A home that had so many code enforcement violations that the city foreclosed on it for repeated unpaid fines is still — even after the foreclosure and the home’s sale to a new owner — a problem for neighbors as the new owners fight to get the home’s occupants out of the house.
“I was here about a year ago and complained about this, and nothing’s changed,” a local resident told the Palm Coast City Council at the council’s March 5 meeting. “The house has a burned-out garage, and the past two or three years the door’s been covered with plywood. There’s all kinds of riffraff parking in the driveway, and they’ve just added more ambiance to the property by dumping tires on the side of the house. I don’t know what it takes to get something done about this house, if it’s a legal issue or whatever, but I would encourage you to take the time — it’s only two miles north of here — to take a drive and take a look at that house and see if you’d like to see that every day you go to work or the beach or whatever.”
The city had announced plans to foreclose on the home last May.
There had been frequent code enforcement reports: loud music, commercial vehicles, trash left out on the lawn.
Then there were the police incidents.
On one occasion after Hurricane Irma, neighbors saw smoke coming out of the house and ran down the road toward it to make sure there wasn’t a fire. The first thing to emerge from the home was an pair of pit bull dogs barreling toward the neighbors. The second was one of the home’s residents, Christopher Hetzel, who came out of the home drunk and fired a handgun, according to a Sheriff’s Office report.
Frustrated neighbors repeatedly complained to the city.
“I’ve seen the pictures. They’re bad,” Mayor Milissa Holland said at the March 5 meeting.
Interim City Manager Beau Falgout said the new owners who bought the house in a tax sale are trying to remove the occupants, who’d been tenants of the previous, out-of-state owners.
“They are trying to work through the legal process,” he said. “Obviously, with the change of owner, I believe that’s a good thing.”
“I have the photos of that [home] on my desk,” City Attorney Bill Reischmann said. He added that the city has been “very aggressive because of the nature of the problem,” and is pressing the new owners to quickly bring the house in compliance with city code.
“We’ve been working with the attorney representing the new owner to make sure that they move as quickly as possible to get the tenants out,” Reischmann said. “They’ve got a hearing scheduled on their motion to clear the property. Once they can get that squatter, for lack a better term, out of the property, they’re going to be able to go in, and I’ve been assured by the attorney representing the new owner that they’re going to go in there as soon as they can to take steps to bring their newly owned property into compliance. ... We have given them, basically, very little time. ... It is going be a very short window of opportunity.”
