Cops evict men from filthy north Seattle home; neighbors celebrate

SEATTLE -- Neighbors who banded together are claiming victory after sheriff’s deputies evicted two men from a filthy and rundown home.

The junk and garbage outside the Haller Lake house in north Seattle has frustrated people for months.

But neighbors fought to take back their neighborhood.

Cops ordered the two men to leave the derelict home on North 137th Street on Thursday morning.



Neighbors call them squatters – although they apparently had started out as renters who stopped paying rent. And after they had  taken the house over, neighbors said, the men trashed the property and terrified the neighborhood.

“This can happen in any neighborhood,” said neighbor Lynn Catlett.

The house got tied up in foreclosure and its owners hamstrung by bankruptcy. Neighbors say the unwelcome guests couldn’t be tossed out right away – technically, the squatters were legal tenants.

“(There) seems to be a little motion on changing regulations so that this kind of thing can be prevented or derailed,” said Catlett.

So the neighbors came up with nearly $2,000 in court costs to get the men evicted.

“I’m so glad that everything’s coming out of the house and I don’t have to live next to criminals anymore,” neighbor Evelyn Jarosz said.

City crews started clearing all the junk from the backyard while neighbors dragged out what they think could be stolen property from nearby homes.

Neighbors now worry the men will only continue to terrorize other neighborhoods until Seattle's landlord-tenant laws are changed.

“You have no defense against it. Unless you are the owner of a property, you are defenseless,” said Catlett.