HOUSTON—Between the pile of old tires and a curbside recliner on the 5000 Block of Rapido Road in southeast Houston, you will find one fed-up great grandmother named Cleotha Turner.
"It makes it look horrible," Turner said. "It’s very frustrating, very!"
It doesn’t take much to get her started.
"It’s not made for TV, what I have to say," Turner said. "What’s the problem? If you put your camera over there you’ll see what the problem is."
But the problem is not just an abandoned home across the street, run down and dangerously unsecure from neighborhood kids.
The problem is not just the rodents she must deal with.
"We’re talking rats. I kill them because I don’t want them over here," Turner said.
The biggest problem for the 71-year-old is when she called the city for help, not much happened.
"I called it in about a year ago," Turner said.
It’s true.
Records from the Houston Police Department’s Neighborhood Protection Corps show the City of Houston’s 3-1-1 call center received the first complaint in July 2008. But it took until July 2009 for city inspectors just to drop by, much less do anything about the eyesore.
"We pay our taxes, at least we should get something for it," Turner said.
What citizens should be getting, according to the Neighborhood Protection Corps, is at least an on-site inspection of a problem property within two business days of their complaint.
That’s the goal, but the reality is nowhere near that. The 11 News Defenders analyzed more than 26,000 3-1-1 complaints about eyesore properties. More than 16,000 weren’t inspected until a week after a complaint call. About 5,800 weren’t seen until a month after being reported. Nearly 400 properties did not get a visit until six months after a citizen complaint was filed. And a few dozen cases took longer than that.
An abandoned home with broken windows on the 5000 block of Wilmington Street took more than 10 months to check out. Just down the road in the 5300 block of Wilmington Street, a house littered with junk cars took 11 months. And a home on the 300 block of Eichwurzel Lane took two years from the time of complaint until city inspectors paid an on-site visit.
"I’m not happy with those stats," said Montecella Flaniken, Assistant Director of Field Operations for HPD’s Neighborhood Protection Corps.
"I think we have a lot of work to do," Flaniken said.
11 News: "If I’m a citizen, and I pick up the phone and call, and I wait and I wait and I wait, is my government doing what I pay taxes for here?"
Flaniken: "I think your government is doing what it can to address your problem. Can your government do it better? Perhaps that is true."
Flaniken pointed to funding restraints for the long delays, but City Councilmember Wanda Adams wasn’t exactly buying it.
"It’s not a good message," Adams said.
"There’s no excuse for delay, because if I’m a taxpayer, I expect a better quality of service, and when I feel like I’m not getting that quality of service, I feel as a taxpayer and a citizen, that somebody doesn’t care," Adams said.
As the chairperson of the Council Committee on Neighborhood Protection and Quality of Life, she’s making more manpower a top priority.
"What we’re doing now is to make funding available for the Houston Police Department to be able to hire 13 additional inspectors," she said.
It’s a first step of more to come, Adams pledged. Growing up in the city’s Fifth Ward and seeing neighborhood decay firsthand, she said she can relate.
"I can be empathetic because that could be my grandmother, that could be my mother," Adams said.
But for grandmother Cleotha Turner, it will take more than words to convince her of the city’s intentions.
"Sometimes I’m afraid to go out at night," Turner said. "I mean it’s terrible, I don’t think they care."
