Army of strangers clear junk from elderly woman’s Penticton property

There were heaps of garbage and mountains of junk on the residential property.

A notorious eye sore off Okanagan Avenue in Penticton has been the subject of numerous complaints to the city.

That’s until complete strangers decided to step in.

“We didn’t know there was an elderly homeowner here suffering through all of that so once we knew that we had to kind of step it up,” said Jake Evans who runs a local community watch group.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "We didn't know there was an elderly homeowner here suffering through all of that so once we knew that we had to kind of step it up," said Jake Evans who runs a local community watch group.

An 86-year-old woman owns the home.

She asked not to be identified but told Global News her son, 53, parked his motor home in her driveway without permission last summer.

She said that is when nefarious characters started hanging out at all hours of the night and discarding items retrieved from dumpsters.

“It was often spilling out onto the roadway,” Evans said.

Through the power of social media an army of volunteers mobilized to clean up the property.

The work was the brainchild of Jana Huolt, a close family friend.

“I came here and told them what my plan of action was. With the support of Jake we put it on Facebook and just had hundreds of people giving us support,” said Huolt.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I came here and told them what my plan of action was. With the support of Jake we put it on Facebook and just had hundreds of people giving us support," said Huolt.

The homeowner felt helpless, describing the situation as living a “horrible nightmare”.

Sometimes she wasn’t able to leave her home without moving the junk out of the way.

The woman said she is incredibly thankful to the volunteers who came to her rescue.

The property is also on the radar of city hall.

It’s been the subject of six inspections since October.

A clean-up order was issued earlier this month.

“We were prepared to bring a council report on April 18th requesting remedial action which would then get billed to the property owner,” said Tina Siebert, Penticton Bylaw Supervisor. “In this case, it wasn’t the property owner that was causing the unsightly conditions around the home.  It was unfortunately her son so we didn’t really want to have to do that.”

The son has moved out and his motor home was towed away Monday.

Volunteers hope by this summer the woman will be able to enjoy her garden and her home once again.