Evicted Watertown woman frustrated by town's actions
Life for Basia Dziewanowski has been rough these last few weeks. The Watertown homeowner has been living in a local motel since June 30 after health department officials ordered her out of her home of 40 years. They condemned the house for numerous health and fire safety code violations.
"I miss my home, I miss my cat," Dziewanowski, 59, said between sniffles. "I'm taking things day by day."
Since leaving 41 Katherine Road nearly three weeks ago, Dziewanowski said the town has accused her of violating the order to stay off the property until the sanitary conditions are remedied. Though she admits she's been back to the house briefly since being evicted, it was only to empty the trash and get rid of rainwater that had collected in containers in the yard, she maintains.
"Nobody told me I wasn't going to be able to go into my house!" said Dziewanowski. "Nobody tells me anything."
Dziewanowski believes the town wants to permanently oust her so it can seize the building and "make a lot of money off it." She feels health inspectors who issued the condemnation last month exaggerated or misstated the conditions inside the house in order to bolster their case.
"They call everything 'garbage,' " she said. "There are no pests. I'm the pest they want to get rid of. They lie whenever it's convenient and I have no one to protect me."
Dziewanowski says she is both physically disabled from a knee injury and bothered by allergies to environmental pollutants. "If I go onto my property, they'll put me in jail. That's what they want. They want me out of the house," she said.
Mark Reich, the town's attorney, said after hearing from neighbors that Dziewanowski was still on the property and that she had not turned over her house keys to town officials as required, the town went back into Middlesex Superior Court on July 1 for an emergency order to change the locks and to reinforce the prior order to stay out of the house. Watertown police have since stepped up their surveillance of the home, he said.
Dziewanowski said that on July 1, while she was standing in front of the house doing interviews with local media, police came by and told her to leave.
Frustrated she wasn't able to get the town's permission to be allowed into the house with a cleanup crew over the July 4 holiday weekend, Dziewanowski said she went into court on July 3 seeking legal access. Reich said the court denied her request.
Dziewanowski said she's angry the town turned off the electricity without her knowledge, a move she called "illegal" and one that affects the air quality inside the home and her job. Air purifiers and dehumidifiers that were keeping the air clean, and her answering machine, where she receives calls to serve as a medical interpreter for Polish speakers, no longer work. "I want to get back into my house to fix things, but they're making it more and more unsafe for me and everyone else," she said.
Reich said the electricity was turned off as a precaution to make sure she wouldn't become a squatter in the house. He disputes the value of the dehumidifiers to fix the home's air quality.
"We did allow her to go back in to get medications and air purifiers," said Reich. "We had great concern she would be going back into the property" and remain there despite the order, he said.
The sanitary and fire safety conditions inside the home make it unsafe not only for Dziewanowski, but for town inspectors, said Reich. "We've been doing this over the course of years. We're not acting in any way to discriminate against . . . her ailments or her situation."
Reich said the town has required Dziewanowski to get approval before any work is done to the home because "we don't want to make things worse." The health department is now working to find grant funding to help Dziewanowski pay for the extensive repairs and cleanup required so she can return home.
