Sun, sand, and seediness

Such is life in the tiny, two-room cottage that John Murphy and his 10-year-old daughter call home on Salisbury Beach, a former ocean playground on the North Shore that for decades has been mired in decline.

Murphy began complaining to town officials nearly two years ago when he moved into the home, which once was a summer rental but now is among dozens of similar structures used year-round. According to Murphy, his documented complaints went nowhere, despite the many obvious code and health violations in the cottage.

“The town did nothing,’’ said Murphy, 43, an itinerant handyman who said he cannot afford to move off the beach and out of a place that rents for $650 a month.

Nearly everywhere else, beachfront property is the choicest cut of a community’s land. That’s not a guarantee in Salisbury, where the transient and the marginalized often live among boarded-up and falling-down remnants from a more prosperous era.

But now, motivated by mounting allegations from beach residents of landlord neglect and bureaucratic negligence, Salisbury officials have begun to turn their attention toward living conditions on the long, narrow beach.

“The town does not have a stellar history with complaints of building-code violations at the beach,’’ said Town Manager Neil Harrington, who has held the position for six years. “There’s no sense in sugar-coating it.’’

Many complaints, Harrington acknowledged, appear to have died with lower-level inspectors without reaching the attention of their supervisors. One result, he said, was a broad sense of abandonment by the beach’s many poorer residents, who often were afraid to contact town officials or their landlords because of the possibility of eviction.

“It was deplorable,’’ Harrington said.

The beachfront neglect, mostly concentrated in the southern end of the neighborhood, is a far cry from the area’s halcyon days that began a century ago. Mill workers from Lawrence and Lowell would flock to the beach on their days off, attracted by fresh air, surf, and the pushcarts, concession stands, live entertainment, and amusement rides that blossomed to serve them.

Eventually, show-business stars such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sammy Davis Jr. performed there.

But by the early 1970s, Harrington said, increasing mobility and a craving for newer forms of entertainment started a long, inexorable decline.

In an effort to reverse that slide, Salisbury officials are planning to upgrade health-inspection services, insist on eliminating longstanding code violations, and get the message out to landlords and tenants that the status quo has changed at Town Hall.

One step toward meeting those goals could be taken tonight when the Board of Selectmen is scheduled to consider a regional health agreement with Amesbury and Newburyport, its neighbors to the west and south. Under the plan, the three communities would share a health director. For Salisbury, which does not have a full-time health agent, the arrangement would be an immediate improvement.

“We’ve been kind of limping along in our health department,’’ said Harrington, who served two terms as mayor of Salem in the 1990s. “The situation really has not served us all that well.’’

The regional accord would help Salisbury move toward implementing a plan approved in 2008, under which comprehensive building inspections would be ordered to bring all housing up to code. That plan, which Harrington believes is the first of its kind in Salisbury, has not yet begun because of plummeting municipal revenues and unfilled positions.

As an example, the town has seen a drop of $500,000 in state aid for its fiscal 2010 budget of $18 million, Harrington said.

The inspection plan would require all rental housing at the beach to be checked for violations before each summer season. All other rental housing in this town of 7,800 residents would be subject to inspection when tenants change.

“The town has not fulfilled its obligation at the beach,’’ Harrington said. “That’s a longstanding historical situation that we’re going to try to rectify.’’

For Murphy, a turnaround cannot come soon enough. His landlord, Vo Son Hong of Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, was cited last month for 13 dangerous conditions and code violations. Murphy said Hong routinely ignored his complaints, including during the two months when his gas heat was turned off because of a leak.

Hong could not be reached by the Globe for comment.

Another of Hong’s tenants, Melody York, who lives with her 12-year-old daughter, echoed Murphy’s allegations that the landlord ignored routine maintenance and subsequent complaints. Leaks, poor wiring, and a lack of insulation in her two-bedroom cottage mirror much of the living conditions in Murphy’s home next door, York said.

“This place is just falling apart, piece by piece,’’ said York, 33, who is moving from the house in July after nearly two years there.

Despite the problems at the beach, Harrington sees a promise of better days ahead. Nearly all the bars, arcades, and discount stores clustered near the center of Salisbury Beach are under agreement for a proposed mixed-use development that could dramatically change the beleaguered face of the area.

And with mandatory inspections of rental housing looming, beach residents might soon have new leverage at Town Hall.

Still, Harrington said, the old perception of Salisbury as a Wild West place where connections were king will take some time to disappear.

“We have a long way to go,’’ the town manager said.