Weeki Wachee neighbors say drug house has upended quiet subdivision

Neighbors in Palm Grove Colony say a house at 8134 River Point Drive has turned a quiet Weeki Wachee subdivision into a place where cars arrive and leave at all hours, needles turn up around the neighborhood and people are seen stumbling or passed out in the front yard. Several residents said they feared retaliation and would not be named, a sign of how long the problem has worn on the block.

Residents described the property as occupied by a constantly changing group of people who make, use and sell drugs there. They said the fallout has reached beyond the home itself, forcing families to keep a closer watch on children, pets and property while daily routines in the subdivision have changed around the activity.

Public parcel records list the owners as Joel E. Dunn and Pauline C. Dunn, and show the single-family home was built in 2005. The address sits in a neighborhood that residents otherwise describe as quiet, which is part of why the scene at the property has become such a source of frustration.

The complaint is not just about one bad house. It is also about what neighbors see as a long gap between repeated nuisance conditions and a strong enforcement response from the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office. Residents said the situation has persisted for years, with little action to stop the behavior that has taken over the property.

The dispute lands in the middle of a wider county fight against opioid abuse. Hernando County has said it has struggled with the costs tied to rising opioid abuse, and the Florida Department of Health says drug-poisoning deaths are the leading cause of injury death in Florida. DOH-Hernando says the county is responding through Overdose Data to Action, a surveillance and prevention effort that includes free Narcan at its Spring Hill and Brooksville offices.

Local prevention efforts also run through the Hernando Community Coalition, which says it has operated since 2003 and works with law enforcement, schools, parents and health professionals to reduce alcohol and other drug abuse in the county. For Palm Grove Colony, though, the immediate issue remains the same: a single address on River Point Drive has become a daily source of fear in a neighborhood that expected peace.