Florida Homeowners Cry Cover-Up by Developer

A sunken patio sounds like an attractive feature on a house, but the reality at Hampshire Homes is an American dream turned into a nightmare.

Two dozen homes in the 307-house development near Fort Lauderdale were built around homemade garbage dumps that contained rusty dishwashers, washing machines, tires, tree trunks and assorted trash. Landfill has settled in the yards of these homes built in the late 1980s and 1990, opening the earth and revealing buried waste in something resembling “Poltergeist” without the evil spirits.

In selling its subdivision, Lennar Corp. urged would-be home buyers to “Be a Winner. Live the Lennar Life.” But Kathy Doan, who lives on one of the dumps, has her own motto: “Live the Lennar way: Garbage in your backyard.”

Now the market for Hampshire Homes is dead, homeowners are ready to sue and the state attorney general’s office has subpoenaed Lennar’s records on developments since 1980.

Lennar, the state’s biggest home builder, acknowledges burying construction waste, which is legal, but says it doesn’t know how the rest of the garbage got there, sitting inches under a layer of topsoil.

The discovery by Andre Melton’s 7-year-old son was innocent enough. The boy pointed out some holes in the yard early this year.

“I dropped my shovel in there, and it never came back,” said Melton, an electrician by trade and president of the homeowners association. “I tried to fill it with dirt, and the more dirt I put in the hole, the more dirt it took. It would never fill.”

After test digs, about 250 truckloads of construction debris, tires, junked appliances and household trash were hauled away. What remained was a lake 200 feet long, 80 feet wide and up to 10 feet deep within a few feet of the back walls of the 20 houses along Daffodil, Periwinkle, Olive and Marlberry streets.

Red clay roof tiles were plucked from the ground in a development with shingle roofs. Large tree trunks and less recognizable objects thrust out of the water at odd angles.

Curiosity led to testing other areas, and radar trackers discovered a similar pocket of waste last month in backyards shared by four homes across Daffodil.

An 8-foot chain link fence keeps the neighborhood’s children away from the lake and a plastic orange mesh fence lines the second find.

William Scherer, the homeowners’ attorney, charges Lennar created an illegal dump during construction, depositing its own building waste, accepting truckloads from elsewhere and covering it with topsoil before leveling the land.

“Who will buy a house behind a dump on a dump?” he asked.

Lennar “has acknowledged that it probably has disposed of legal and normal construction debris,” said company spokesman Bruce Rubin. As for the junk that turned up, “We have said over and over we do not know how that happened.”

The Miami-based company is a long-lived rarity in the Florida construction industry, a builder with a 42-year track record and a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Lennar delivered 4,680 homes in Florida, Texas and Arizona last year while generating a $70-million profit on $870 million in revenue from construction and financial services.

But with the big size come questions about oversight. The 1,500-employee company farms out most of its development and construction work to subcontractors, a practice that raised questions after a like-named Hampshire Homes subdivision was devastated by Hurricane Andrew in neighboring Dade County four years ago.

A lawsuit charging hurricane damage was aggravated by shoddy construction and flimsy materials was settled under a sealed agreement with homeowners.

Owners on the Hampshire pit want to be relocated if trash extends under their houses, and others want an analysis of their property and a financial award for loss of property value. Scherer has mentioned a possible $30-million price tag, and his firm would collect one-third of any financial settlement.

Selling prices on the starter houses ranged from $70,000 to $90,000-plus, but widespread publicity about the homeowners’ predicament has frozen the market.

“Right now, our properties are worth nothing as far as I’m concerned,” Melton said.

Appraisals, a requirement for the sale, purchase and refinancing of homes, are virtually unobtainable. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a real estate agent with a Hampshire Homes listing away from the pit said the market is defunct.

“Every time you mention Hampshire Homes, they say, ‘What? I don’t want there,’ ” he said.

At the request of the city, the state attorney general’s office launched a civil investigation of environmental and consumer protection issues raised by Hampshire Homes, but the probe is not limited to the development.

“We certainly will assure ourselves that what is happening at Hampshire Homes certainly isn’t going on anywhere else,” said Assistant Atty. Gen. Stephen LeClair.

A police investigation determined no criminal charges would be filed over the trash-filled lake because any dumping violation would have been a misdemeanor at the time, and the five-year statute of limitations has expired.

But homes bordering the second dumping ground were built after passage of an anti-litter law in 1988 that made it a felony to dump commercial trash or loads weighing more than 500 pounds, Scherer said. The clock on the statute of limitations begins at the time of discovery, leaving the possibility of criminal charges open.

The property is near an old Dade County landfill, and aerial pictures before construction show piles of tires and other debris.

“But I don’t think any of the aerial shots would show the magnitude of debris that’s there now,” said police Lt. Bill Guess.

Rubin, Lennar’s spokesman, said the company has assumed responsibility for cleanup, has offered to remove all waste and will consider buying any houses if problems are unfixable, but the homeowners association put work on hold after hiring Scherer.

Trust is gone, and frustration reigns.

A steppingstone path to Melton’s backyard leads to a screened patio he built for his wife last year. But it is pulling away from the house, and the barbecue he received for Father’s Day lies idle.

The family planned to move next year after their second child is born, but all moving plans are on hold. So is the lifestyle he thought he bought at his peach and white house three years ago.

“We don’t barbecue anymore. We don’t grill anymore,” Melton said. “It’s just been covered up.”