Auburn home where squatters lived, overrun by rats is boarded up

AUBURN, Wash. — An Auburn home overrun by rats and occupied by squatters was boarded up Thursday. This is the same very home where a woman was viciously mauled by dogs back in February.

According to the King County Sheriff’s Office, 26 calls have been made to that same house since 2020.

Michelle Proven lives next door to the now-boarded up home. Proven says the neighborhood first noticed people coming and going back in November of 2020. Since then, all sorts of things have been dumped into her yard.

“We’ve had rats, obviously more junk than anybody knows what to do with and it just kept accumulating,” said Proven. The homeowner says she filed multiple complaints with code enforcement, but no action was taken until Thursday. Her suspicion is that the vicious dog attack outside the home may have finally forced authorities to act.

“The case started a while back, it was a vacant home that became squatter occupied,” said Ladonna Whalen, King County Abatement Manager. “It was all in place even before the dog attack, it would have all just happened anyway.”

According to the King County Sherriff’s Office, the owner of the home never took steps to evict the squatters.

Therefore, code enforcement stepped in as a surrogate. Working with the King County Prosecutor’s Office, they secured an abatement.

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