City decides against yurt for woman

City Hall has yanked the yurt.

Charlottesville officials have reversed course and decided not to spend $10,000 to buy a circular, wooden hut for Pauline E. Mallard, who lives in a tent on her overgrown and trash-strewn Angus Road property.

The yurt had been pitched last month as a humanitarian solution to a long-simmering problem between Mallard and her neighbors. For three decades Mallard, now 80 and wheelchair-bound, has resided in a series of cars, campers and tents on the site, drawing the ire of neighbors who say they are tired of looking at her menagerie of trash bags and gardening equipment.

Partnering with Habitat for Humanity and a local church group to build Mallard the yurt would have addressed neighbors’ concerns while providing Mallard with a permanent roof over her head, officials believed.

But after hearing little support from those neighbors, the city has abandoned the idea.

“There are a number of issues regarding the track record of the individual and the use of city funds,” said Jim Tolbert, the city’s head planner. “It’s dead as far as I’m concerned.”

Mallard and the city have a long and turbulent history, dating back to 1974 when she was convicted of assaulting a police officer. That incident led to a number of lawsuits, and the burning down of Mallard’s house the day before it was to be put on the auction block. She was charged with arson but the case was dismissed.

In the mid-1990s the city building code board made her clean up her property and later Charlottesville forced her to tow away the two station wagons in which she was living. Four years ago the city condemned the public housing unit she shared with her son because it was infested with cockroaches and tainted with human and animal feces.

Since then she has alternated between living on her property — which on a recent day was cluttered with 12 trash bags, five wheelchairs, four ladders, two tents and two wheelbarrows — and in shelters and rented apartments.

Mallard could not be reached for comment Tuesday. When interviewed last month, Mallard said she was unaware of the city’s plan to purchase the yurt. Members of a local church and operators of a homeless shelter said they had discussed the idea with her.

One reason city officials discarded the yurt proposal, Tolbert said, is they feared she would either “destroy” the yurt or would not keep her belongings inside the structure.

Two weeks ago a church group hauled away a truck full of trash and trinkets from Mallard’s property. Now, “it’s trashed again and you couldn’t tell it was cleaned up at all,” Tolbert said.

Neighbors say they have no problems with Mallard personally and would like to see her secure permanent housing. They are, however, fed up with trash spilling out on the street and fear that it would be impossible to sell their houses with such an “eye-sore” next door.

To them, the city’s proposal would not solve the problem.

“We felt that it would not correct the situation,” said Phyllis Birckhead, who lives with her mother across the street from Mallard. “They could put [the yurt] as far back on the lot as they wanted to and the lot would still be a mess.”

Some Charlottesville taxpayers also panned the yurt idea.

“I can’t see my tax dollars rewarding this lady who chose her predicament,” Naomi Roberts told councilors at their meeting Monday.

The church group has informed the city it intends to continue helping Mallard clean the property. In return, the city says it will step up its enforcement of its code and cite Mallard for her unkempt lot.