MELBOURNE, Fla. – They complained, called law enforcement, and contacted their county commissioners, and now, some neighbors can finally celebrate seeing homes they said were overrun by squatters get knocked to the ground.
In a video watched millions of times since Thursday, Sheriff Wayne Ivey showed a new unit within the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office demolishing a home on Seneca Drive.
“What you’re about to see is what happens to houses here in Brevard County that make the sheriff’s ‘High Intensity Target’ list,” Ivey began the video. “There’s nothing worse than having a bad neighbor, except having a bad neighbor that’s a criminal and trashes up the neighborhood.”
The sheriff said the next house on the demolition list is a property full of trash directly across the street.
Neighbors complained about that house in March to Melbourne Community Correspondent James Sparvero.
“We’re at our end,” Dewey Shattock said. “We don’t know what more to do.”
Neighbors like Shattock and April O’Neail said they were frustrated because no matter how many times they complained about trash or drugs, nothing changed.
Neighbors said the owner died so there was no one to give deputies permission to kick the squatters out.
“We just kept on it,” O’Neail said when asked what’s changed over the last six months.
With help from county commissioner Rob Feltner, O’Neail said the house still standing is now going to a foreclosure auction.
Commissioner Feltner said he’d like to see the house cleaned up and some new, good neighbors brought onto the street.
As O’Neail understands the process, the house could also be knocked down, just as Sheriff Ivey mentioned, once the auction happens on Oct. 15.
“That’s when the bank is supposed to buy it and take possession of the property, and according to the sheriff’s department, they have permission to do the same thing to that home as soon as that happens,” O’Neail said.
She told Sparvero she feels like she’s getting her neighborhood back.
“Ecstatic, honestly, with the house gone, there’s nowhere else for people to squat,” she said.