Behind the Door: In and Out of Court, a House in Limbo

This week, Wheaton Patch is looking behind the doors of houses in the area that have been condemned. Today, we look at a Kemp Mill resident who wants to stay in her home, regardless of its condition. Tomorrow, we will tell the story of a successful turnaround of a once-unlivable house. For the entire series, click .

Barbara Syska was at home on Fairoak Drive caring for her husband with Alzheimer’s the first time an inspector for the Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs came to her house, and she wasn’t sure what to do. When she opened the door, she thinks the inspector saw a broken pipe inside.

“I started to explain I had a contract to replace it,” she said. “Maybe they did not understand me. I was nervous.” 

Syska said that the inspector told her he could condemn the house that same day if she did not cooperate.

Daniel McHugh, manager of housing code enforcement, said the inspector, Wright Jolly, only cited her for exterior violations that day in 2006.

“He could have condemned in 2006,” McHugh said. “But we chose to work with her to just give her citations for the outside.”

In the last five years, Syska has been through multiple hearings at the District Court, and her house has been condemned. Within those five years, her husband died, she had knee surgery and she briefly lived in Virginia when her house was deemed unfit to live in.

Throughout all this time, she said she has come to believe that the county’s code enforcement complaint system is rife with abuse, and that financial difficulties have been the real culprit of the condition and length of time it’s taken to fix the house.

“I don’t remember how many times I came to court,” Syska said wearily.

A few months ago, her lawyer, James Kolb stopped representing her. Kolb says he was fired. Syska simply says he went away.

Barbara Syska has been representing herself ever since.

A Court Order to Look Inside

In the months leading up to her husband’s death, Syska says, she was worried about their house but didn’t want to upset her husband.

 “I wanted my husband to live as quiet as possible,” she said.

According to court records, on June 5, 2007, Barbara Syska sent a letter to the District Court asking for her hearing date of July 1 to be moved back because her husband was in intensive care. Six days later, Ryzard Syski died from complications from a brain injury resulting from a fall. (While Syska spells her name with an "a," most of her family spells their last name with an "i.")

Additional court hearings were postponed because of Syska’s knee surgery and recovery.

Syska is convinced a neighbor called in the original complaint and has been repeatedly reporting her since then. The county does not give out the names of complainants (and, in fact, takes anonymous tips). Surrounding neighbors on Fairoak Drive say they know nothing about it or would not return phone calls.

In 2008, the DHCA received notice of problems inside the house.

Several of Syska’s family members had brought photos of damage to the inside of the house to Kolb and forwarded them to DHCA.

On May 6, 2008, the family members, who were not individually identified in the court recording, appeared at a hearing to describe the condition of the house in the pictures and the ill effects they believed that mold was having on Syska’s health.

According to the court recording at that hearing, Syska rebuffed this part of her family and refused their offer to stay with them if she were kicked out of the house, telling the judge that another part of her family was helping her fix the house.

At the end of the hearing, she asked for a restraining order against the family members who came forward with the photos, but the judge wouldn’t entertain her request.

Based on that testimony, and the photos, the judge ordered that DHCA was allowed to inspect the inside of Syska’s house, with the expectation that it would be condemned if the damage in the photos was accurate.

Several days later, the housing department recorded extensive violations on the house, including exposed wires on the ceiling, “offensive odors” coming from the basement, mold damage throughout the house, a broken front walkway and steps, as well as interior work to be done in the kitchen.

Of the house’s 58 total citations, 34 of them are from the weeks between April 21 and May 8 in 2008. Today, most of these are listed as “corrected” in the county’s database.

Time and Money Needed

Syska says she and her son, Buc, have spent tens of thousands of dollars so far on renovation and repairs and hundreds of dollars of interest on the debt for those costs. She’s not entirely clear on the breakdown of expenditures for renovations and debt, but Syska estimates that they’ve lost at least $40,000 in total.

That includes damage sustained when pipes in the house burst during two winters’ worth of snow — once when her electricity went out and once when Syska was living in Virginia in a rental property owned by her son while she was not allowed to live in the house in Wheaton.

In March 2010, she was cited for living in the condemned structure and tearing off the “condemned” placard placed on the front door of the house. She was found guilty a month later. According to court records, the fine was suspended due to indigence.

Syska maintains that a previous judge assigned to her case had given her temporary permission to live in the house in December of 2009, as some repairs had been made, but there is no record of that in writing. Court records show she was allowed to live provisionally in the house on November 24, 2010, based on renovations made so far.

According to McHugh, the citations that remain include some wall damage throughout the property, related to termites. Open violations on the property include crumbling outside stairs, a deteriorated rear wood overhang and water damage inside the house.

“I will be remodeling my house, as fast as possible, not to please the housing department but for my own benefit,” Syska wrote in September of 2010 to the current judge in charge of the case. “However, it will take years to finish it unless I have my money, buried in the house, that is the reverse mortgage.”

Syska says she has to live in the house for a certain amount of time to establish residency for a reverse mortgage to be approved.

In the meantime, the trial for the remaining citations is set for Tuesday, after a hearing in early April.

“It’s been a difficult time for her. Hopefully, we can put this all behind us soon,” another son, Lyszak Syski said.