ROBSTOWN, Texas — In Robstown crews are cutting down the weeds and boarding up some houses. Code Enforcement and the Robstown Police Department have partnered to get rid of abandoned homes in the city that are now a magnet for drug addicts and other criminals.
Robstown Police Department Sgt. Art Gonzalez described what he and other officers saw when they walked into one of those abandoned homes on Elizabeth Street.
"Okay we come in here and we noticed all of this trash and debris in here,” Gonzalez said.
The officer gave 3NEWS a tour of the home that had broken windows everywhere along with plenty of syringes left lying around containing what appeared to be heroin residue in them.
Upstairs was the same story, but there were two mattresses with blankets and it looked like someone had slept there the night before and did plenty of drugs.
Police told 3NEWS there were a number of complaints about this place so they got together with Code Enforcement to get something done here and all across town.
”So, we had neighbors behind this house and in front of this house that complained that people were walking through the property," Gonzalez said. "As you noticed, we cut the grass in the front. They’re coming from the back and the front and just hanging out here.”
The partnership is patterned after Corpus Christi’s and there are plenty more homes to clean and board up.
”We have 10,000 residents we service here, 10,000 plus, and there’s about 2,000 that are dilapidated that are either having people use drugs in the home, things they’re not supposed to do, illegal activities,” Richard Ortiz with Robstown Code Enforcement said.
Now that the house on Elizabeth Street has been taken care of, the city may have to take the owner of the abandoned home to court and demolish the property to keep it from continuing to be used by addicts.