UPDATE: A neighborhood is overrun with squatters. And now, one homeowner is taking matters into his own hands. He is boarding up the vacant house next door so the intruder can’t move back in.
Alfredo Serrano is on a one-man mission to keep squatters from moving back in to the house next door.
We introduced you to Serrano last month. He lives on Sombrero Drive, a street where neighbors complain squatters are crashing at three different homes.
Serrano shows us the plywood Clark County put up to keep out trespassers from the house next to his. He even reinforced to boards himself to keep out a guy who Serrano says keeps breaking in.
Broken wood and trash litter the inside, making the place unlivable.
“I don’t even know why they want to be here under these conditions,” Serrano says.
Police have thrown the guy out. But he kept coming back.
He would “just break the boards and break the screws right out. I re-boarded it. I re-screwed it and everything,” Serrano says.
Serrano figured that would keep the guy out for good.
“I thought that solved the problem. I boarded it up two times and they came back.”
The guy kept moving back in. Serrano took matters into his own hands. Every time the guy would knock the plywood out Serrano would bolt the bolt the boards back up.
“I kept rebolting it,” Serrano says.
Serrano now wonders what it will take to get the guy to leave for good.
“When’s it gonna end?”
Serrano doesn't blame the guy. In fact, he does feel sympathy for the guy who likely is homeless. Serrano just doesn't want the neighboring house to get damaged, taking his down with it.
ORIGINAL STORY
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) -- Squatters have moved into three different houses on one valley block and almost burned one of them down. Fed up neighbors want them out.
"Very frustrating," says Teresa Anselmo, a homeowner in the neighborhood near Desert Inn Road and Eastern Avenue.
She tells 13 Action News people who don't belong there moved into the house next door and won't move out.
"They won’t leave. They won’t leave."
The time of day doesn't matter. Someone is walking in and out of the house day and night.
"There's traffic at night time all the time," says Anselmo, who lives on Sombrero Drive with five of her children, ages 13 to 22.
Anselmo is worried her kids could be in danger because of squatters.
"I’m not comfortable leaving my 16-year-old at home," Anselmo says.
13 Action News visited the house next door.
A woman through the closed door angrily told us to deliver this message to her neighbor. When asked if she is a squatter, the woman responds, "Tell the neighbors to mind they (expletive) business!"
Homeowners complain that house is just one of three on Sombrero Drive alone that squatters have taken over.
We went to another address a couple of doors away. Filth, boxes, empty beer bottles and spare rib bones littered the front porch.
Across the street a few doors down, Fredo Serrano showed 13 Action News a boarded up house next to his. Serrano says squatters nearly burned it down a few months ago.
"They started a fire that could've burned my house down," Says Serrano.
Police have removed people from the house next to Serrano's and the one next to Anselmo's but both homeowners tell us squatters keep moving back in.
"They act like they're leaving and they come back," Anselmo said.
Neighbors want police to beef up patrols around here. Police have told us in the past if neighbors have problems in their neighborhoods to go to their community meetings. They're on the first Tuesday of each month.
