The mortgage foreclosure crisis has caused ugly messes in neighborhoods throughout the country. Often when big banks foreclose on homes, those homes fall into disrepair and become inhabitable eyesores.

Community activists in San Diego recently resorted to a new tactic to send a message to banks that aren’t keeping up with the properties obtained via foreclosure. The group, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, organized a scene to behold outside a branch of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC).

The organization collected junky furniture and other trash that was sitting on a foreclosed property owned by the bank and plopped it in front of one of the bank’s branches.

“This house is an example of what’s being done to the community as a result of the foreclosure crisis,” Dave Lagstein, local organizer for the activist group, told NBC 7 San Diego. “But there are many others homes like this all around San Diego, and we’re here to send a message to Wall Street banks like Bank of America that they need to take responsibility for what they’re doing to our community.”

In response to the protest, BofA issued the following statement:

“Bank of America is committed to maintaining properties. This property has not completed foreclosure yet, however when we become aware that a property in the foreclosure process has been vacated and is not being kept up, Bank of America will take reasonable measures to have the property maintained.

A property preservation representative has been assigned to address the property issues. We ask residents to log on to https://fieldservices.bankofamerica.com or call 866-515-9759 to report a bank property in need of maintenance.

Bank of America works with service providers to inspect and maintain more than one million properties each month to protect the investor’s asset, as a service to the surrounding neighborhood and to support the ultimate sale of the property to a new homeowner.”

AOL Real Estate has a snapshot of the trash left outside BofA.