Property Full of Trash!!! Help.

Anyone have any ideas on how to keep one of my properties clean. The property manager spends over an hour every morning picking up trash on the property. Beer bottles, pop cans, cigarette butts, and other trash. We have tried doing contests with each building, sending out notices, even threatening to charge tenants, but it is too hard to prove somethimes who is doing it. This is an affordable property so we really do not have the money to hire an additional staff member to pick up trash. Any ideas on how to keep this property clean? Thanks.

I used to be at an Affordable site and I implemented the maintenance staff spend an hour every morning picking up. Also as they were working the should not walk or drive past any piece of trash. We bought them the trash pickers and each had a trash can to make things easier in the morning. Then when tenants or the owner complains about work orders not being done, simply let them know that the maintenance staff is having to spend 1/2 a day a week picking up trash. It worked for my old place.

Hire the local kids and supply them with gloves and trash bags you will have kids lining up to get a few bucks for a bag of trash clean up . The kids in my complex go door to door to asking to walk dogs or take out trash. You will be surprised how involved they will get and how much pride they will take in their community.

You're providing a service at no cost, so what's their incentive? I would notify them that if they can't clean up after themselves, rent will increase to cover the cost of hiring someone to do it for them. If your PM is doing it in one hour a day, that's 30 hours a month. Assuming your PM earns $30 an hour, that's $900 a month split by the number of properties on site. If you have 100 units, that's only $9 a month per unit, which is nothing at all.

If it were me, I would charge no less than $10 - $15 per unit so each unit feels the impact of their behavior. Any excess funds could be funneled into an account for special clean-up items like pressure washing the walls, or other long-term cleaning.

Unfortunately, if you have a group of people that don't respect the property enough to keep it clean then it will not stay clean. If you step into it from a different perspective and not focus on the trash but focus on making the property a place where you wouldn't want to throw down your trash you might just change things. I don't know your property but I know when there are well maintained grounds with flowers planted and the bushes trimmed the trash does begin to diminish.

Also make sure there are plenty of trash recepticles around the property so that people always have a place to put the trash.

I tried hiring kids in the community to pick-u trash. I paid them $5 for each bag they brought me. Just watch our for the smart ones who go over to the dumpster and bring you a bag of trash from there
I also had some of the kids help us plant seasonal flowers. It have them a sense of ownership and helped reduce the amount of trash.