One of the joys of property ownership!

[Marc Ramsay]

So I get an email from my maintenance guy with a photo of a large pile of garbage that was dumped on my MF property by some scumbag who was too lazy and too cheap to take it to the dump himself.

This isn't the first time this has happened, but this is definitely the biggest mess. I got the whole thing on video but there's not enough detail to make out a license plate number. The car in the photo is with the truck and scouted out the area before the truck arrived.

I am trying to find out if there was a fair or festival or other outdoor event nearby on Thursday as all of the garbage was from that sort of event.

This sort of thing is such a PITA. We have nailed guys dumping before, but this has emphasized my need to get another security camera installed along our driveway to catch good video of all the vehicles driving on and off the property so I can get license plate numbers.

The camera equipment is on order and should be installed next weekend. Hopefully next time we can nail the scuzballs quickly.

[Joel Owens]

The police can't zoom in to find the plate?? They might have more sophisticated equipment than you or ideas you haven't thought of. I would definitely file an incident report. If they dumped any hazardous waste as well and not just trash the county or city will get more involved.

In our old subdivision there were some people dumping illegal chemicals down the storm drains.

The water division came out and they eventually caught the businesses doing it and arrested them. They put a metal plate on top of the storm drain telling dumpers they would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We also put up neighborhood watch signs and it stopped after that. You might want to offer a rent credit to any of your tenants who report this stuff to you and take down info that leads to an arrest. Make them be your eyes and ears on some things. On vacant units we offered a reward to our tenants for anyone that was looking to break into the units. Word got out and the criminals stayed away as they knew there was an incentive to turn them in.

In Atlanta years ago there was illegal dumping of old tires in vacant multifamily buildings all across Atlanta. Some had hundreds or thousands of them. The recyclers charged 1 to 2 dollars per tire to dispose of so was expensive. Atlanta worked out a 2 week agreement with some companies to go around in a certain mile radius and pickup all the tires.