Lincoln man says house next door has been abandoned for a decade

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Bobby Beltran has been in the Woods Park neighborhood for 12 years.

And for 10 of those, he’s said lived next to a vacant, abandoned property.

“There’s total water damage,” he said. “You can see from the inside directly out; you can see vines from the outside going inside to the back.”

The house has holes in the roof and an overgrowth of weeds around the property.

“I don’t think it’s fair to someone who pays as much taxes as we do in Lincoln or Lancaster to have to deal with living next to an abandoned health concern, safety concern of a house,” Beltran said.

His main concern is that the doors are open. He’s seen animals going inside and worries that squatters will, too.

“I feel like it’s irresponsible, unneighborly to take not care of the property,” he said. “If you own it, you should be able to take care of it. If you can’t take care of it, you should sell it.”

Beltran said he has called the city inspector and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services multiple times.

“The health department has said that it’s a city issue, and the city says it’s a health department issue, so they both give us the runaround,” he said.

Beltran said he’s been making reports on the property every two weeks for a couple of months, and he plans to “keep bugging them” until something is done.

“That way, they can’t say, ‘Oh we never knew anything about it,'” he said.

Nebraska DHHS said it has no power to regulate or condemn abandoned residential properties. The department said that would be a city issue.

Channel 8 reached out to the city’s Building and Safety Department but didn’t receive a response.