Hollister Code Enforcement Officer Mike Chambless says the city
is considering an increasingly common way of dealing with dead
lawns in front of foreclosed homes.
Hollister Code Enforcement Officer Mike Chambless says the city is considering an increasingly common way of dealing with dead lawns in front of foreclosed homes.
“We have actually had preliminary discussions on painting the front lawns of foreclosed homes green,” says Chambless.
Hollister City Manager Clint Quilter confirms to the Free Lance that it is a possibility.
“We have discussed that,” commented Quilter. “We got the idea from a news story out of Stockton, so we’ll be contacting their city to see whether they had success.”
Enter entrepreneur Nick Terlouw, owner of Stockton-based Greener Grass Co. who came up with the concept while he was watching his favorite college football team.
“I was watching a USC game, and I thought, ‘If they can paint the end zones, what about the front lawns of all these foreclosed homes?'”
Terlouw worked out the idea, and has been painting lawns, acting as a consultant for places that are thinking of doing the same thing. He’s been making media appearances ever since.
“I’ll be on CBS with Katy Couric (today), and I did Inside Edition yesterday,” says Terlouw, who went on to say that the green lawns, who says that the lawns deter looters, vandals and squatters who see dead lawns as I sign that no one is home.
Undersheriff Patrick Turturici says indicators that a home is occupied are always a good thing.
“There is a lot of vandalism in homes that are obviously abandoned,” says the under sheriff, “and people go in and smoke their drugs, or whatever. You don’t want to invite that sort of thing to your neighborhood.”
