Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509250108
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SHEBA WHEELER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The smell of rotting food, spilled liquor, feces and urine is overwhelming as the Roanoke building inspector opens the door and cautiously steps inside the house at 928 Stewart Ave. S.E.
Neighbors had filed complaints that the house was open and accessible to "street people," and inspector David Hatchett had been to the house several times since its abandonment to prepare it for demolition.
"Be real careful where you step, and let me go in first," Hatchett said as he led the way through a maze of crushed beer cans and empty wine bottles. He took a reporter and photographer with him one morning as he inspected abandoned homes in various stages of deterioration.
Experience has taught Hatchett that abandoned property can become the secret playground for curious neighborhood children or the nesting ground for drug dealers and drunken vagrants.
The outside of the house appears rather sturdy - the yard needs a good mowing, but otherwise the property looks decent and livable. A small porch seat beckons invitingly.
But opening the door reveals a nightmare.
Clothing is strewn on the floor, which is littered with filth. Holes and gashes as large as two fists scar the walls. An easy chair lies on its side, torn and soiled. Hatchett's advice to watch your step is prompted by two concerns: The floor is weak and could collapse in some sections, or you could step on a used needle.
The family who lived in the house has been gone for months, but even now, it still feels as though you are invading someone's personal space behind the boarded doors.
A doll's crushed head and one roller skate lie upstairs in the children's room. In the closet is a dingy tennis shoe.
Though wrinkled and water-stained, a letter signed with love from Deb lies in a pile of children's school pictures and posters of the "Home Alone" movie series.
On a downstairs wall hangs a veteran's plaque issued by President Reagan, amazingly intact and spotlessly clean.
It's hard to imagine how a family could live in a house where one can feel the sun's hot rays through an enormous hole in the kitchen ceiling. You can see the clouds drifting by on a bright day. Heavy rains would have flowed like a mountain stream from the kitchen, through the hallway and into the living room.
What caused the hole?
"It wasn't a fire," Hatchett said. "This was water rot. It would have taken years for this to develop, and they lived through it all without ever complaining to us once about it. People will live in circumstances that you would never believe."
Ironically, before the tenants abandoned the house, they installed new windows that must have cost a few hundred dollars in the bedrooms upstairs, Hatchett said.
"I see it and I deal with it every day, but I don't understand it," he said. "And I don't think I want to."
Hatchett said it was questionable whether landlords Thomas B. Heatherington of Texas and Richard D. Vitullo of Roanoke knew of the house's condition.
"It is unconscionable for me to think that a landlord could not have known what shape their property was in," Hatchett said. "If they had bothered to even drive by it once in the time that it took that roof to collapse, they could have seen it from the alley."
Hatchett took Vitullo to court, but when Vitullo declared bankruptcy, the bank was forced to reclaim the property, and the judge ordered the city to demolish it. It would cost the city anywhere from $7,000 to $10,000 to have a contractor demolish the house.
The house was built at the turn of the century and probably had been occupied by a number of families, but it would take less than four days to crush it with a bulldozer.
Vitullo, who moved out of his apartment on Circle Brook Drive several months ago, could not be reached for comment. It could not be determined where in Texas Heatherington lives.
"Richard Vitullo was forced into bankruptcy because of what his tenants did to the property," said Marc Small, the lawyer who represented Vitullo in court. Small said Vitullo would not comment on the property's tenant history, nor would he comment on actions he took as landlord.
by CNB