For six years, residents near downtown San Jose have put up with a blighted piece of private property that has attracted drug dealing, homeless squatters, trash dumping and even a pair of fires.
Now, the city has had enough and has taken the owner to court to force a change.
The property at the corner of Fourth and St. John streets is along the route that Xzander Smith takes to his classes at San Jose State.
“So, I’ve walked past this lot pretty much every day and seen the debris and have wondered every day what happened,” he said. “Just kind of seeing the debris and trash and everything around it, it’s an eyesore for sure.”
The lot is actually four different addresses, enclosed behind a ramshackle chain-link fence since 2018. There used to be a pair of empty Victorian homes on one end, but they both burned to the ground in March in a fire started by some homeless squatters. Brian Coria lives in a duplex right next to the lot where the houses burned.