GASTONIA, NC (WBTV) - People in one Gastonia neighborhood want county officials to clean up a strip of old abandoned homes in their neighborhood.
When we visited Larry Ghorley back in March, he was not happy about the row of houses in his neighborhood on Old York Road near Highway 321.
The foreclosed homes are an eyesore for neighbors and a haven for rodents.
Last week, neighbors took matters into their hands and spent the weekend mowing lawns and hauling debris.
"They can't even afford to bring a dumpster out that we can put all the trash in, we had to haul it to the landfill ourselves," said Larry Ghorley.
But there's still more cleaning up to do.
The problem started several years ago when the homes went into foreclosure.
Four of the homes are owned by the same person. All of them are unoccupied and the county has been unable to locate the owner.
Neighbors says requests to the county to have the area cleaned up go unanswered.
"We can't get the county to do a thing, all they do is give us the runaround," said Ghorley.
WBTV's Sarah Batista took Ghorley's questions to Ron Smith with Gaston County planning and development.
Smith says county officials met Monday to discuss a plan of action.
"We've extended all the avenues that we can do on our level and so at this point we're going to forward it up to the assistant county attorney and he'll take it over from there," said Smith.
The county plans to declare the properties a nuisance and put a lien on them, but the process could take months.
Once the lien is in place, the county can begin cleaning up the area.
WBTV will continue to follow the story.
