Villages couple irked by junk furniture across the street

When Ken Lambert looks out his front window, he sees a mattress, box springs and assorted furniture staring back at him.

He and his wife, Sue, said the neighbors across the street in the 43000 block of West Snow Drive moved out a week and a half ago after their house was foreclosed Aug. 29.

Soon after the neighbors cleared out, a cleaning crew took all the abandoned furniture out of the house. But instead of loading it onto a truck and hauling it away, the crew deposited it in the front yard. The furniture was still outside Friday afternoon.

The Lamberts and a few other neighbors moved the furniture to the driveway and leaned the mattress and box springs against the house so it wouldn’t look quite as disorderly, the couple said.

“We don’t like the image it portrays in the neighborhood,” Ken said. “This could lower the appraisal value of our house and others, and it’s unsightly. Everybody keeps up their place real nice here and this is an obvious concern.”

The couple said their neighbors feel as strongly about the junk as they do. They want to do a refinance on their house and believe the junk across the street could hurt them in their negotiations.

Sue and Ken moved to Maricopa six years ago from Chandler. They didn’t mind the extra distance they had to drive to their jobs in the Valley — Sue works for a credit card company and Ken works in health care — because they liked their nice, quiet neighborhood in The Villages at Rancho El Dorado.

They also made friends with many of their neighbors.

“When we first moved in we had barbecues with our neighbors,” Ken said. “Everybody would look out for everybody else.”

But as the economy took a dive, things changed as people moved out and home ownership turned over.

Sue doesn’t blame her neighbors for having to abandon ship. “It’s obviously their right to do that,” she said. “But we’ve stuck. What rights do we have as neighbors?”

Ken said, “Whoever owns the property should step up and take care of this problem.”