BY JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 26, 2000
Inside:
Smashed windows. Leaky roofs. Holes in floors. Animal feces. Christmas
wrappings, newspapers, broken glass, broken appliances.
Outside:
Rotting roofs, bent eaves troughs, glass shards, piles of wood chips, an
unlicensed car.
This
blight is in Bloomfield Hills, on a wooded 4-acre lot where trees and brush
screen the mess from motorists passing on busy Woodward but not from neighbors
and the adjacent Cranbrook Academy. The
complex includes three abandoned houses, a pair of garages and two
outbuildings. It's located on Whysall Lane, and residents say they want the structures
fixed or removed.
Josie
Reyes, who has lived across from the buildings for 20 years, says,
"They're an eyesore." A couple named Shaw used to live there, but
they died a few years ago and no effort has been made to maintain the
buildings, she said.
Reyes
says she thinks the dilapidated houses have depressed home prices in her
neighborhood and made it hard to sell houses.
"Embarrassing,"
she says.
See Blight