A Growing Problem for Neighbors

The notice of violation went out two weeks ago to the owners of the house on West Poplar Road: Cut down the wild grass in your front lawn in the next seven days, the Loudoun County Health Department said, or the county may take its own measures.

The owners did not reply. Padlocked and stripped bare of furniture, the Sterling Park house has long been vacant, neighbors say. But last week, the lawn, which had grown well over two feet tall and provided a thick nesting ground for rusty cans, plastic wrapping and faded newspapers, was mysteriously mowed flat.

It's a sign of the times, said real estate agents, mortgage lenders and Loudoun officials. Although unmowed grass is sometimes a sign that property owners are away, the problem in Sterling is seen as being compounded by the downturn in the real estate market and a rise in foreclosures, in which houses are repossessed by lenders after property owners default on their mortgages.

In the older neighborhood of Sterling Park, where grass is uncontrolled at more than 100 houses -- many of them unoccupied and bearing "for sale" signs -- the problem generated enough neighborhood complaints to prompt Supervisor Eugene A. Delgaudio (R-Sterling) and the Board of Supervisors to pass a county-wide anti-weed resolution. It calls for immediate action by property owners, banks or real estate agents.

Delgaudio said the issue has since been resolved. "The problem has been reduced to a handful of houses in Sterling," Delgaudio said two weeks after the measure passed.

According to Victor Avitto, urban division supervisor of the Loudoun Health Department, there have been 41 complaints about tall grass in the county, compared with 23 at this time last year. Since the board resolution passed last month, the department sent 16 notices that gave homeowners a week to trim their yards. County regulations stipulate that grass be tended as a matter of environmental health. Tall grass can foster rodents, Avitto said.

For neighbors, an unkempt vacant property is also a blight on the neighborhood.

"I wish someone would move back in there. I wouldn't like for it to be empty," said Shelby Toney, 66, planting begonias and marigolds one recent morning in her front yard on West Nettle Tree Road. Her property abuts one that has been vacant for months. Toney fretted that the property would devalue her own, which she and her husband have owned for 38 years and are looking to sell soon.

At the padlocked residence, the three-foot grass has yet to be trimmed. Plastic film is stretched across a window in place of glass, a lamp atop a post leans drunkenly, and bits of trash are caught in the overgrown lawn.

Two streets away on West Poplar, Liz Madison, 46, said some neighbors had taken action themselves, mowing the untended lawns.

Elsewhere, in the Sterling neighborhood of Forest Ridge, neighbors also took matters into their own hands, hiring friends and paying out of pocket, said Milt Settar, head of the Forest Ridge Homeowners Association. High grass and unkempt yards are among the biggest problems the association has faced this year, Settar said.

Where there is no homeowners association, such as in Sterling Park, the basic upkeep eventually falls to the Department of General Services, which contracts out the job after the Health Department has sent its notice of violation, Avitto said.

But the person who cut down the grass at the house on West Poplar Road probably was the lender, Avitto said.

"If you want to sell it, you've got to get it done," Jason Kertgate of Jobin Realty said of agents or bankers mowing the overgrown grass themselves.