Opinion: Congresswoman’s house is called an eyesore and neighbors fume
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“This just shows us what type of people represents us in Congress, Senate and perhaps even the White House. They have no respect for others unless they feel that they can get something in return. It is infuriating to hear of such things.”
Those are the words of Tim Gray, a Times reader who shared those views today with staff writer Jeff Gottlieb. What’s Gray so upset about? He’s writing about a California congresswoman who has let a home she owns in Sacramento become, by neighborhood consensus, an eyesore.
A little background: Gottlieb reported last August that the Code Enforcement Department in Sacramento declared a house owned by Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach) a “public nuisance.”
The place had fallen into disrepair — the grass was a few feet high — after Richardson, a Democratic state lawmaker from Long Beach, was elected to Congress in 2007 and set up a residence in Washington. At the time, Gottlieb reported:
Neighbors in the upper-middle-class neighborhood complain that the sprinklers are never turned on and the grass and plants are dead or dying. The gate is broken, and windows are covered with brown paper.
Well, as Gottlieb reports today, things aren’t much better, and neighbors are fuming. He describes how three neighbors — Carrie Thomsen, Janet Carlson and L. Kraft—responded to the conditions at the house:
Carrie Thomsen would walk across the street with her hose and water the yard. Janet Carlson sent her gardener to Richardson’s house once a month for six months to mow the lawn. She paid kids $20 during the fall to rake the leaves. They once peeked inside and saw a dead bird in the living room. Her husband turned on the sprinklers the last two summers, worried that dry weeds would turn into a fire hazard. Things got so bad that in the fall of 2008 rats began breeding in Richardson’s backyard and soon moved into L. Kraft’s house next door. It took him two months to get rid of them. Richardson’s house, he said, “has become such a hideous place.”
Upset neighbors have even appealed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) for help.
Like Gray, reader Todd Lorber e-mailed Gottlieb with a comment: “I think the rats had moved in long before the neighbors realized it. Is it any wonder why the state and federal balance sheets are in such disrepair when you see how these people run their personal lives?”
And Phil Perry had a question: “Wonder what her Long Beach legislative district house looks like? Ah, the joy of gerrymandered districts....Recall the stories about her city-owned car and unpaid mechanic bills on her BMW car? The sad thing is, your story will not influence her actions one iota.”
Click here to read the full story on Richardson’s house.
-- Steve Padilla
Top photo: U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson’s Sacramento house. Bottom photo: Brown paper covers windows at the house. Credit: Randi Lynn Beach/For The Times
