Church or no, the junk's got to go

A rural property the owner calls a haven for the homeless, but which Kootenai County has deemed an illegal RV park and junkyard, was ordered shut down last week by a First District Court judge.

In a ruling filed Friday, Judge Rich Christensen told the landowners to clean up the 15-acre parcel along Garwood Road in northern Kootenai County or suffer the consequences.

Christensen ruled last week that Alden K. Arveson, who owns the acreage at N. Kennan Court, a mile east of U.S. 95, must remove the RV trailers and assorted mobile homes, manufactured homes — some intact, others in disrepair — from the property, according to court records.

Arveson, 70, argues the mobile homes are used to house Kootenai County’s poor, many of them his relatives or friends, who have no other place to live.

He has established a church on the site called Keystone Chapel Village and its Facebook page, like the property itself, is a work in progress, Arveson said.

“We rent to homeless people who have no standing in Kootenai County,” the 70-year-old self-described scrap-metal collector said.

The tenants pay Arveson $150 a month for services at the property that Arveson said include electricity and sewer.

Kootenai County, which filed the civil action against Arveson two years ago for violating its RV and junkyard ordinance, has had the property in its crosshairs since the 1990s.

“Arveson has used the property to store rubbish, garbage, clothes, scrap building materials, wrecked or inoperable recreation vehicles, recreational vehicle parts, trailer, tires, heavy equipment and other materials not customarily used in connection with the operation of a single-family residence,” according to court records.

Christensen’s ruling comes on the heels of Kootenai County code violations filed twice since 2006 in which Arveson was given 45 days to remedy the violations. In one case, items the county deemed violated its junkyard ordinance were removed, according to Arveson, although the violations were not completely remedied.

He had “a number of vehicles hauled off the property,” according to Arveson. And a recycling company, “cut and hauled large equipment and truckloads of metal for recycling.”

But the cause of frustration goes deeper than the squatters’ camp on his property, or miscellaneous junk, said neighbor Steve Petillo, who has watched the inaction next door despite the county’s threats.

“This guy’s whole property is still totally loaded with junk,” Petillo said. “Basically he has a bunch of junk lying around, flatbeds, old cars, old tires. He doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t care.”

Petillo accused his neighbor of not only violating the aesthetics of the rural community but of being a threat to the environment.

“He thinks it’s his property and he can do whatever he wants with it including storing petroleum products, having the shanty town,” Petillo said. “He has no regard for the aquifer and no regard for anybody else’s rights, but his own.”

At first blush, Arveson’s 15 acres — that include open glades, and a speckling of ponderosa pines — looks like many other rural properties in northern Kootenai County.

A closer look reveals the source of the county’s and neighbor’s frustration.

Petillo said the order does not go far enough to make Arveson clean up the scrap metal, salvaged materials, wrecked or inoperable vehicles, old tires, and an assortment of other items that give it the junkyard distinction.

He accuses Arveson of sidestepping the law with loopholes such as establishing what Petillo calls a phony, nonprofit church as a false front.

“It’s all a ruse,” said Petillo, a retired Bay Area police officer.

If Arveson does not comply with the judge’s order within approximately 60 days, the judgment allows the county to enter the premises and enforce the order, effectively snuffing Arveson’s mission.

“Kootenai County has more poor or working poor than it can handle,” Arveson said. “Our church is an encampment for poor people. Kootenai County is kind of against poor, old people.”