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In September, squatters at the Hillside Motel on Aurora Avenue North were notified that they would have to leave. On Monday, sheriff’s deputies went in and vacated the property.

John & Shari: After clearing Ballard Commons, the hope is tents ‘won’t come back’

The motel, which has been a spot for “drug dealers and a lot of bad stuff,” as ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio host Shari Elliker explained, has been an abandoned property.

“It got foreclosed on because the property owners or the people that had the loan out on it kind of abandoned the whole thing after there was a fire in 2020,” she said. “So after that, everything just kind of went into the skids.”

“I was just thinking about — this is the only thing that went through my mind because, of course, I’m a narcissist and I always think about myself. But I was thinking about me in that circumstance,” said fill-in host Jack Stine, the host of ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Nights.

“What I thought about in reading this — because they busted in there at, what, 6 ‘o clock in the morning? That’s not a good time for drug addicts,” Jack said. “… But I was picturing myself, if I was in that circumstance and I’ve been squatting in this place for, I don’t know, weeks maybe, and then I’m high out of my mind, and all the sudden detectives come in, that’s just got to be a really rough time.”

Jack and Shari agreed that “The Hillside Motel” is a great name for a movie motel though.

So when the squatters were forced out, what did deputies find at the motel?

“They found a smashed jar of grape jelly, a makeup bag, a hot plate, hunting knife, tin foil, a machete, a leaf blower, a foot bath, and a wheelchair,” Shari said. “Those are just some of the things they named that they found.”

“I have to figure out what the deal is with the drug-addicted homeless having an affinity for hospital equipment,” Jack said, noting that he’s seen people with wheelchairs and even gurneys.

As far as the motel, Jack says he’s glad the sheriff’s department took initiative to break this stuff up.

“I don’t want to take this thing, which should be a good story, and paint it in a negative light, but this builds up over time. It’s like an infestation, it just doesn’t happen overnight, you have to allow people to do this for weeks, if not months,” Jack said, asking, “Do we currently live in a society that permits this kind of behavior, and even encourages this kind of behavior?”

Shari says it depends on where you live. She gathers, from this case, that it’s been in court for a while.

“That’s part of the problem of getting people out,” she said, referencing the bureaucracy portion. “Then you have the problem of displacing people. What if they go in there and there are children, or there are people where there’s no place to put them? I think they kick the can down the road as much as they can.”

Listen to Jack and Shari’s full discussion in the first hour of Monday’s show:

Listen to the John Curley and Shari Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.