“I’ve tried everything to get her to leave. I know what’s going on there,” he said, of the primary tenant. “I’ve chased drug dealers out of there. I chased one down the street with a sword. But there’s always somebody coming back to replace them.”

The home had been owned by Dean’s mother, but he said she left it to him when she died and other members of the family did not want the house.

The painting job was a last-ditch effort to avoid the legal eviction process in Queensbury Town Court, a sort of shaming that he hoped would inspire the tenants to take their act elsewhere.

“I have a different way of evicting,” he said.

With the tenants apparently unwilling to leave voluntarily, he will pursue a court-ordered eviction, he said.

No one answered the door at the home Thursday afternoon or Friday morning when a reporter visited.

Many of the windows appeared to be covered with black plastic, and at least two dogs that sounded quite large barked inside. Bags and bags of garbage were piled on the porch.