GREAT FALLS — Every town has some: houses with overgrown weeds, peeling paint, and an endless stream of complaints. No matter how many times neighbors try, the problem just won’t go away.
“Code enforcement...is complex,” said Brock Cherry, Director of Planning & Community Development for Great Falls.
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That might be an understatement. Filing a complaint about a neighbor’s neglected property can make things awkward—or worse—between neighbors, but those complaint forms are often the only path to action.
“We have a property there, a few houses down that, unfortunately, has kind of become a hoarder's paradise, I guess you could say,” said Dakota Wyatt, a Great Falls resident and KRTV employee.
The house near Wyatt has already had one abatement, but the problems keep coming back.
“Whether it needs to be harsher fines or something to prevent this from happening again, because truly, I mean, it's cost the city $22,000 once. I think the estimate for this current abatement is $18,000. So $40,000 in taxpayer money for the same property. And chances are it's going to happen again in two to three years,” Wyatt added.
Repeated cases like this—sometimes called “abatement repeaters”—are especially tough for city officials. Because they’re so rare, Great Falls doesn’t have a clear system for preventing the same property from cycling through costly violations year after year.
“The things that we look at is the frequency of—of 911 calls, of EMS calls, police calls, which for some of these properties, we're talking about hundreds of responses,” explained Cherry.
Each problem property can cost the city tens of thousands of dollars in resources. The more complicated the violation, the more the city spends on legal fees, staffing, and cleanup.
“A lot of people just want to be able to see inside the glass house of enforcement and know what's going on. And I don't think that's unreasonable. And I think we can do that. But once again, it's going back to if we do that, we're probably looking at investing a little bit more and changing the way we do things,” Cherry said.
If neighbors want change, city officials say community action is key—reporting issues, attending meetings, and filing complaints are still the best ways to help tackle nuisance properties for good.
