Lynn looks to lose house of squalor

LYNN – City officials want to unload a problem property at 160 Essex St. that they inherited through a foreclosure, and hope to raze a few other rundown homes on Jackson Street.After the city spent thousands in April to clean up a grimy mess of rotting food, human waste and broken bottles in the Essex Street building, it was recently broken into by vandals and dirtied up all over again.On Tuesday, city officials at a Public Property meeting said enough is enough and voted to put the property out to bid.”Neighborhood kids got into the place and used it to hang out and party,” Ward 3 City Councilor Darren Cyr said. “There are three or four other vacant houses on the same street, so it’s time to put this one out to bid.”Former owner Pauline Pizza, who city records also list as Pauline Flynn, passed away several years ago and, since then, an unidentified family member and several other squatters have taken up residence there.In March, the city foreclosed on the seemingly abandoned property for non-payment of taxes totaling $28,567.39 dating back to 2004.Listed as a two-family home, the 5,788 square foot residence was issued a letter from Inspectional Services Department (ISD) in January in regards to a complaint about the front and rear porches that are in serious disrepair.ISD Director Michael Donovon conducted a thorough inspection of the inside and outside of the property last November and he ordered the porches to be repaired.The work was never done and the building continued to fall into disrepair.In March, ISD Building Inspector Roger Ennis declared the dilapidated residence uninhabitable and had it boarded up to avoid further vandalism and vagrants from living there.City officials had the inside and outside of the building cleaned in April, but the spring cleaning didn’t last very long.Aside from the Essex Street property, Cyr said two homes at 46 and 138 Jackson St. are in dire disrepair and should also be torn down.”We’ve given the owner of 46 Jackson St. (Stephen Yee of 20 Aborn Place) every chance to clean it up, and he has been carrying this on for almost 20 years,” he said. “He (Yee) has gotten more breaks than anyone deserves.”Cyr said the Fire Department painted a large red ‘X’ on the front door of the building, deeming it unsafe and hazardous to the neighborhood.At a cost of roughly $25,000-$30,000 to raze the property, Cyr admitted it would be the equivalent to a year’s salary for a city hall employee, but said it’s more than worth it.”We will be able to recoup the costs by placing a lien on the property so that if it’s sold, we will get the money back,” he said. “And the only way Yee would be able to stop the city from tearing it down would be to take us to court and prove with an engineer that the building is structurally sound, that he is doing everything in his power to fix it up and that he has the money to fix it up. I don’t think he can do that.”Cyr said the other property at 138 Jackson St., with the last known owners listed as Walter J. and Francis E. Burke, has been a problem for years and is so jam packed with stuff that it’s hard to even walk around.”The city has tried to help the older lady that lived there for years, but she hasn’t lived there in over a year and animals have gone in the house making it a real safety issue,” he said. “If there was ever a fire, the whole neighborhood would go up.”The City Council will discuss the possibility of a bid for the property at 160 Essex St., and the possibility of tearing down the two homes on Jackson Street Sept. 9.