Cover Story: Residents of the 800-block of Mercer Street
Trying, and failing, to stop a neighbor from using their street as a junk yard
Mercer Street is a short, residential street in Grant Park that dead-ends at some railroad tracks. That's where Steve Carr lives.
Carr occupies three adjacent lots on Mercer Street. He lives in a building with no running water. He collects his drinking water from cisterns and has at least one portable toilet. He also has marked off a patch of his property with a hula-hoop-sized metal ring, from which he claims that none of the neighbors can see him if he relieves himself.
Carr also collects junk. "Industrial salvage" and "recycling" is how he describes it. To say that Carr has a lot of stuff on his property would be like saying Mark Foley was merely friendly with interns. "I've got a few thousand pieces of stuff here," Carr says. "It's like the ocean. It ebbs and flows."
Neighbors are getting sick of living next to Carr's ocean.
Amir Carlock has lived on Mercer Street since 1985. He says he tolerated Carr's junk when it was confined to Carr's properties. "I used to go over and help him move stuff around," Carlock says.
But three years ago, after Carr started piling his junk on the public street, neighbors started complaining — first to Carr, then to the city. The matter eventually went to court, and Carr was fined $4,450 for a variety of code violations.
But the junk piles remain.
As recently as last week, there was a dump truck parked next to the cul-de-sac's fire hydrant, and a forklift, a trailer, a cement mixer, metal beams, and a variety of other industrial knickknacks were piled high on the public street next to Carr's house.
"Do I have stuff on the street?" Carr says. "Yes. Should I move it? Probably."
While being interviewed, Carr telephoned the fire department to ask if his dump truck was indeed parked illegally close to the hydrant. A fire crew from Station 10 soon showed up and asked Carr to move his truck away from the hydrant or else the police would tow it. He didn't move it. And several days later, no one had towed it.
Councilwoman Carla Smith, who represents the area, says Carr's willingness to pay the city's fines has allowed him to beat the system.
"We've done every legal measure possible," Smith says. "He just won't comply. He's withstood the rest of us because the rest of us have lives."
She says she'd like to stiffen fines for code violations, but sloppy organization and lax enforcement are also part of the problem.
The city's code enforcement office even had trouble finding Mercer Street in their records. "I don't think there is a Mercer Street," a clerk told CL. The clerk eventually found Mercer Street, but could not locate any of the neighbors' complaints (several of which the neighbors had written copies of).
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