City pitches a solution

For three decades, Pauline E. Mallard has lived intermittently in a series of campers, cars and tents on her Angus Road property, an unkempt anomaly among the rows of tidy ranch houses in this quiet neighborhood.

And for three decades those neighbors have pleaded with Charlottesville officials to do something — anything — to force Mallard to take better care of her overgrown property and clean up her ever-expanding collection of tote bags, gardening equipment and trash.

Now city officials think they have hit upon an innovative, if quirky, solution: They are going to spend $10,000 to buy Mallard a yurt.

The city would like to team up with the local Habitat for Humanity to purchase the portable, tent-like structure, with city funds, and a church group has agreed to set up the circular, wooden hut. If the plan goes through, Mallard would live like the nomads of the Central Asian steppes who have resided in yurts for thousands of years.

Using taxpayer money to stitch such a festering community wound is more than justified, officials say.

It is the humanitarian thing to do, they contend, for the wheelchair-bound Mal-lard, who is approaching 80. The yurt would provide more protection from the elements than Mallard’s blue and gray tent, which was donated by a church group. And the yurt would have electricity, a bathroom and indoor plumbing.

“It’s a difficult issue to balance her rights with the rights of the neighborhood, and we decided to see if we can partner with some folks to give her a place to live the rest of her days on her own land, and clean it up for the neighborhood,” said Jim Tolbert, the city’s head planner.

More room for trinkets

A relatively spacious yurt would give Mallard room to store her myriad trinkets inside, instead of having them spill out across her yard. That should placate neighbors who are fed up with staring at garbage bags and piles of trash.

“We are giving her a reprieve and, frankly, her neighbors a reprieve,” Mayor Dave Norris said. “It is going to be a significant improvement over what is there now.”

The city has not sat idly by during the 30 years since Mallard’s house partially burned down under mysterious circumstances. It has found her in violation of the state’s building code and, on another occasion, required her to remove two station wagons that she called home.

But a permanent fix has proved elusive, and caretaking visits by the city and an area church have done little to soothe neighbors’ anger and keep the site neat.

Councilors might debate the yurt proposal during their June 16 meeting. Tolbert has discussed the option with several neighbors and says that a social worker has pitched the idea to Mallard. Members of a local church and representatives of the PACEM organization, which operates a homeless shelter in the winter, said they have also talked with her about the yurt.

But when approached in her tent, Mallard said she was unaware of the yurt plan.

“I don’t mind talking about it, but this is the first I’ve heard of it,” she said. “I don’t feel I’m in a position to say something more right now.”

She declined to talk for publication about her living situation, relations with her neighbors or her past experience with the city.

Neighbors, however, were not so reticent. They say they are tired of having the equivalent of a miniature city dump on their street. And the many retirees who live on Angus Road fear it will be difficult to sell their houses for a proper value with Mallard’s property in such shambles.

“We’ve been asking the city to do something about the way it looked. Every time we look out of our window it is horrendous,” said Phyllis Birckhead, who lives with her mother across the street from Mallard.

The neighbors insist they wish Mallard no ill will and stress that she personally does not cause them any problems. Neighbors spoke of offering her water and food on hot days and letting her use their bathrooms.

The yurt proposal has gotten a mixed reaction along Angus Road, with several homeowners saying they want to reserve judgment until they get more information from the city.

“She needs a lot of help, but we don’t want a $10,000 shanty,” Birckhead said. “At her age she needs to be somewhere comfortable.”

34 years of complaints

The drama between Mallard and her neighbors dates back to 1974, when she got into an altercation with police officers and a neighbor while they were searching her house for the neighbor’s missing dog, according to newspaper accounts. She was convicted of misdemeanor assault and battery but filed a $200,000 lawsuit.

One of the officers countersued and, in 1978, obtained a court order to put her house on the auction block — with the proceeds going to pay off outstanding liens and the $22,500 in damages the court awarded the officer.

The day before the auction, the officer took out a fire insurance policy on the house. Then, six hours before the sale was to begin, it burned down. Mallard was charged with arson, but the case was eventually dismissed.

The house was condemned and torn down by the city in 1983, and Mallard began living in a wood-paneled Chevrolet station wagon, another station wagon and an old camper. The city’s building code board cited her in 1994 and made her clean up the property. More than two years later Charlottesville forced her to tow away the two station wagons.

At the beginning of this decade, Mallard moved into the Crescent Halls public housing complex. But the city condemned the unit she shared with her son in 2004 because it was infested with cockroaches and tainted with human and animal feces. Eventually she was given another unit in the building.

In recent years she has jumped around from rental properties to shelters, while continuing to sleep on her Angus Road lot for stretches of time. Last month a local church group gave her a new tent and helped clean the site.

But that still didn’t resolve the issue, and so some hope the yurt idea can end the neighborhood tensions.

“As we understand it, this is an idea in a preliminary stage of evaluation,” said Overton McGehee, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville. “Habitat is interested in understanding the objectives of the city for this project and the desires of the neighborhood.”

The city is optimistic that Mallard will acquiesce to the yurt proposal and that a long-running saga can come to a congenial end.

Habitat would own the yurt and would be able to reuse it elsewhere at a later date.

“It’s a great idea, it’s not a lot of money and, hopefully, it will solve a problem,” Tolbert said.