Elena Malone has been living in a three-bedroom home in Sun Valley for three years, having fallen in love with the home as soon as she saw it.
“Grow your own tomatoes, couple fruit trees, and it just seemed like a great place to raise kids,” Malone said.
She said at first it was a place where her kids played and felt safe, but over time, she said their next-door neighbor took all that away with what she described as a six-acre junkyard.
“It just kind of multiplied and became things that were pretty worrisome, you know, burnt car batteries, bags of trash, debris, moldy clothes, cigarette boxes,” Malone said.
Her biggest concern? Fire danger in the area. Back in 2017, the La Tuna Fire tore through more than 7,000 acres, the largest in the city of Los Angeles in 50 years.
“If there is a fire and we can’t get out our front gate we are trapped here,” Malone said.
Video over the property from the air shows dozens of vehicles, a shipping container, an ambulance and large appliances like refrigerators, often bleeding down towards Elena’s front gate.
The property owner didn’t respond to KTLA but told the L.A. Times that her son lives on the property and the scavenging became much worse after flames destroyed the home in 2017.
Fires, then mudslides and now a growing collection of junk have taken over the area, but she hasn’t forced him out, telling the Times, “I love my son.”
But for Elena, enough was enough after her husband, Josh, was diagnosed with cancer.
“My husband just finished treatment for cancer,” she said. “I was stuck behind this gate when he was undergoing chemotherapy, vomiting, and I couldn’t get out to go pick him up because there was a car here.”
That’s when she turned to city officials for help. Unfortunately, she hasn’t gotten very far. Instead, she’s been stuck in the middle of a back-and-forth between local police and the federal government.
“LAPD says ‘we won’t go on the property because it’s hazardous waste.’ EPA says ‘we’re only concerned with what’s under the property, but we can’t go on it because there’s too many vehicles. So until LA city clears it, we won’t go on the property,'” she recalled.
This left her feeling that something terrible has to happen before anyone will help her.
“All of those agencies have failed our family and the whole community. I mean, it feels like at this point they’re just waiting for the next fire,” Malone said.
Undeterred, Elena said she is going to keep fighting until her family is safe.
KTLA reached out to L.A. City Council Member Monica Rodriguez’s office and the mother of the man living at the property, but so far, have not heard back.