Neighbors: City Doesn't Care About Abandoned Buildings On West Side
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Neighbors say the city is indifferent to a plague of abandoned buildings on the city's West Side, including one where a woman's body was found several days ago.
As WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports, the two buildings at 3808 and 3810 W. Grand Ave. in the Humboldt Park neighborhood are boarded up. Heuron Wilks and Michelle Young of the activist group Action Now gave WBBM Newsradio a tour.
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The buildings are both 2 1/2-story brick houses covered with peeling aluminum siding. Garbage and even an old couch and box spring are piled up outside.
Wilks says he sees similarly decrepit buildings "all the time."
There are used needles on the ground in the building. But Young says she thinks the City of Chicago is indifferent to the hazard.
"You know what? I don't think the city cares," Young said. "The bottom line – I don't believe they care."
Ellison Carter says the body of an overdose victim was sitting in one of the buildings for two days. The Cook County Medical Examiner's office says the body of a woman in her 40s was taken from 3808 W. Grand Ave. and officially pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. this past Friday.
The woman was an overdose victim, according to Carter.
"They went out and got drugs while the body was still here, and was still doing drugs right in front of the dead body, with the dead girl's money," Carter said.
Lillian Ferrer lives across the alley and said she recently found "three little kids playing back there. I told them, 'You'd better get out before I call the police on you, or call your parents."
The activists say they want the buildings knocked down or fixed up, and they want the law enforced.
