Nicholas Wilson woke up this morning to see a host of deputies and code enforcement officers surrounding his neighbor’s Hudson home.
“This type of stuff that goes on around here is getting out of hand. Really is,” he said.
And he wasn’t surprised one bit.
“I see people piling stuff everywhere. There’s garbage. It’s not really what the neighborhood should look like. It’s looking more and more like a junk yard every day,” he said.
Code enforcement violations give deputies a legal reason to be on someone’s property, but as in Tuesday’s case, that often leads to much more.
“When I walked around back there was a gentleman that was trying to wheel a motorcycle across the property like he was trying to hide it so it was probably stolen,” Cpl. Chris Davila said.
The motorcycle was in fact stolen, and the guy trying to hide it was arrested despite claims he was keeping it for a friend.
Along with the stolen motorcycle, people living here are facing thousands of dollars in fines from code enforcement because of eight junked cars. There’s debris everywhere and people living in a shed.
“In this county you are not allowed to live in a shed. You are only allowed to live in a primary structure,” said code enforcement officer Amalio Vera.
As of February the sheriff’s office has four deputies and several volunteers who work code enforcement cases full time.
“Although we have always been able to enforce county code, now that we are actively doing it, it’s that legal reason to make contact and make the bad people go away and I’ll displace them hopefully out of Pasco County,” Cpl. Arthur Madden said.
This isn’t the first time code enforcement has been to this home.
In all, they cited six people here for violations, totaling more than $13,000.
Deputies also found a second man hiding in the shed who was wanted for grand theft auto.
