In an unusual move, the city of San Jose is suing an Oakland-based tax attorney, arguing that his derelict home in San Jose’s Rose Garden area has become a public nuisance that endangers the health and safety of those around it.
The lawsuit — filed this month in Santa Clara County Superior Court — states that Dragutin J. Sbragia-Zoricic has failed to abate the blight and code violations at a vacant, dilapidated home he owns at 205 Wabash Ave. in San Jose. It further alleges that he has neglected to pay more than $22,000 in fines and fees levied against him by the city.
San Jose is asking a judge to order Sbragia-Zoricic to clean up his property, which sorely stands out from the neatly-kept homes around it, and to provide the city with the thousands of dollars it is owed.
Sbragia-Zoricic — a longtime licensed tax attorney located in Oakland — has owned the home since 2009, according to the lawsuit. But neighbors in the quiet neighborhood said the home has been vacant that whole time.
The property is situated on the edge of San Jose’s historic Rose Garden and Burbank neighborhoods. It’s located a block away from Abraham Lincoln High School, a half-mile away from the beloved Municipal Rose Garden and about a mile from the popular Westfield Valley Fair mall.
According to the lawsuit, San Jose code enforcement officers initially declared the home vacant and neglected in June 2015 and have issued more than a dozen administrative citations to Sbragia-Zoricic over the span of more than six years.
“The substandard conditions at the property substantially endanger the health and safety of homes adjacent to, or nearby, the property as well as the general public,” the lawsuit states.
City spokesperson Demetria Machado said the city rarely takes such legal action against property owners. In most cases, code enforcement officers aim to remedy code violations through voluntary compliance and by using other enforcement tools like warning notices and citations.
“The City’s goal is compliance and remediation of the Code issues, and sometimes a lawsuit is necessary to obtain the compliance,” Machado wrote in an email, adding that the complaint will pave the way for the city to take further action like pursuing receivership if needed.
When reached by phone, Sbragia-Zoricic said he had not yet been made aware of the lawsuit and therefore had no comment.
“Until I figure out what’s going on, I have no comment at all,” he said. “I’m not going to get into anything right now.”
In June 2021, a two-alarm fire broke out on the property, engulfing the home and a smaller dwelling in the backyard, according to city records. The cause of the fire was undetermined despite an investigation by San Jose fire officials.
Joseph David, 20, who lives next door to the property, said firefighters had to break down a fence in his family’s backyard and a gate on their driveway in order to put out the flames.
“I don’t know who owns the land but I know no one has been taking care of it,” David said.
After the 2021 fire, David said, a fence was put up around the property. But before then, he would see squatters going in and out of the abandoned home.
“Before the fence was put up, you could see a mattress in there, food containers, medicine bottles and stuff like that, so there were definitely some homeless people living in there,” he said.
Krista Giovannoni, who lives down the street from the property, said she’s disappointed the owner hasn’t attempted to clean it up over the years.
“It’s just such a beautiful, great neighborhood,” she said, “and to see this dilapidated house on the corner, it really just brings down the tone for the rest of the area.”
This is not the first example of San Jose’s code enforcement officers struggling to get owners to address serious code violations on their properties. In April, a 64-year-old man was killed in a three-alarm blaze that broke out at an East San Jose home that was the subject of more than a half dozen code enforcement cases dating back to 2004.
Nearly a year before the fire, San Jose’s code enforcement department deemed the property at 1028 Wilsham Drive “unsafe to occupy” because of substandard housing conditions that included structural hazards and a lack of electricity and lighting. But less than two months before the blaze, code enforcement officers still found people living inside the home, which had been fenced off, and instructed them to vacate.
Some neighbors on Wilsham Drive blamed city officials for failing to do more to address the blighted and hazardous conditions.
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