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Step 1) Find the Property Owner’s contact information.
- Search the Treasurer’s Office Property Search
If the Owner is a Business (eg ADDRESS LLC) you will need search the Secretary of State’s Business Listings for the Business Owner (possible Property Owner) or Statutory Agent (possilby their Attorney). This can be found on the Doc Id. link.
- Search the for the Property Owner’s Phone Number
Step 2) Call the Property Owner and politely ask them to contact their Tenant to clean up the yard.
Keep in mind that they most likely have no idea how their Tenant is living. So keep the conversation on the Tenant’s behavior.
Ask the Property Owner to contact their tenant to clean the yard and not “commit waste” in the future.
If all goes well, they will thank you for keeping them informed.
Remember to stay calm and remember that the Property Owner may not act positively to your suggestions, that is okay you have another step.
*TIP: It is always good to take a photo and let the Property Owner that you can email it to them to see. This will also give you another way to communicate with them.
**TIP: If the trash is aluminum cans, please let the Property Owner know that the Tenant might use “recycling” as an excuse, or that they are “helping the homeless”. Suggest to the Property Owner that the Tenant bag the cans and place them next to their dumpster. Someone will likely pick them up. The Tenant can even reuse grocery bags, which costs them nothing.
Step 3) Submit a City of Columbus Online Service Request and report the litter. A Code Enforcement Officer will follow-up with the Tenant and ask them to clean up the trash.
This can be done as a guest if you do not want to leave personal contact information. You only need the address of the property. This can be a slow process, so I suggest this be done in combination with steps 1 & 2. You can even do this first if you don’t want to do steps 1 or 2, however you will have more success if you have a positive dialog with the Property Owner.
If steps 1, 2, and 3 do not work, contact your University Area Commission and ask for a follow up with the Property Owner and City Code Enforcement. Remember to leave the Property Address, Your Name and Phone Number and or Email. This will help them to determine your District Representative.
What if your trashy neighbor is an entity like say an alternative weekly called “really awesome shit” and they were paper bombing your entire neighborhood just leaving/ littering stacks of newspapers all over the street?
I’ve had plenty of trashy neighbors in my day, including a suspected drug dealer/wife abuser and this girl, her son and a live-in boyfriend who was high and playing a banjo approx. 16 hours a day. They also had a howling hound-dog. This is in German Village, not Nitro, W.Va. I waited until they stopped paying their rent (invariably happens.)