When I had a similar situation in Hillsborough, I called the County Manager.
(It was actually outside the town limits, so the county was the appropriate
authority.) There are laws about garbage in your yard and they can be
enforced, regardless of health codes or neighborhood covenants. Just start
calling the county or city offices until you get someone to tell you who's
job it is. If you go over and talk to the neighbors and get nowhere (which
is likely) you'll just let them know who told the authorities. So don't
approach them is my advice. Someone who throws garbage in their yard could
give a rat's ass about your opinion or your offer to "help." In my case,
the county manager wrote a letter to the party indicating complaints had
been made but leaving my name out of it. It took a few weeks and a second
more threatening letter (she sent me copies to let me know she was working
on it), but the garbage was cleaned up. In the second letter legal action
was threatened for non-compliance by a certain date.

"Joanna & Mark" wrote in message
...
Good morning everyone!
Hope everyone got their plants through the freeze safely.

I am inquiring about who to notify about a messy neighbor.
This isn't a "I have kids that make a mess" or "I just didn't get around to
cleaning up my yard for a couple of weeks", or even "This is an ongoing work
in progress."
The yard is covered in garbage with two broken down cars in the driveway
with torn bags of fertilizer, mulch and ohter moldy bags of god knows what
all over the vehicles, broken pots all over the ground tipped over, rusted
cans and garbage spewed all over the yard.
I have seen the people who live there once only on a Saturday.
I have asked other neighbors if there was a problem and perhaps we could go
over and help. (Things happen so maybe they could use help cleaning)
Everyone said, no that it was a young couple who was lazy and that stuff
had been there for years.
Most of the people in our neighborhood are very house proud and I love them
for it, but having one house like that in the neighborhood has not only
detracted from it's appearance, I now see that the people that live next to
them have moved out and are trying to rent the home. It frightens me to
think who would rent so close to a place that is such a disaster.
Is there an agency in Raleigh / Garner that could be notified to request
that this be taken care of?

Thanks again,
Jo