A Squatter's Paradise: North Side Block Terrorized by Hellhouse

After foreclosure comes squatters. And with squatters comes a hell no neighboring homeowner wants to face. The residents of the 4600 block of North Lawler Avenue in Jefferson Park experienced this for themselves when a house on their block fell into the hands of a dozen people who moved in illegally and fought every effort to get them out.

DNAinfo Chicago tells the story of how this single-family home was transformed into an outlaw three-flat of illicit drugs, sex, violence, threats and fighting dogs.

“This house was the very definition of a nuisance,” Owen Brugh, chief of staff to 45th Ward Ald. John Arena, told the news agency.

More than 100 calls were made to 911 and many more the alderman’s office. Pit bulls were being trained there, reports DNAinfo, and people were seen taking drugs and having sex in public.

“One of the people illegally living in the house punched a neighbor in the face,” Brugh said. “On Halloween, one of the squatters threatened to fire bomb a nearby house in retaliation for calling the police. It began to escalate.”

The alderman’s office worked for a year to get someone to take responsibility for the house. Finally, a judge appointed a company to manage the property under an emergency court order. The house is now boarded up and empty.

“It will be the first time we’ll be happy to have a boarded-up house in the neighborhood,” Brugh said.

More than 55,000 vacant homes plague Cook County, and 18,000 of them are in the city of Chicago. Dozens of them are filled with squatters who virtually go to war with their neighbors to hold onto their illegal encampments, and many more are gathering spots for druggies, rapists and gangbangers.

» learn more via DNAinfo Chicago

photo credit: flickr photo by Eric Allix Rogers