The old families of Oakland have looked around, and they don't like what they see.

Longtime denizens of Panther Hollow -- with last names like Casciato, DeIuliis and Giampolo -- have seen their numbers dwindle as their children move off and student rental housing eats into the neighborhood.

Some of those who remain are demanding that the city and the University of Pittsburgh do more to combat the trash and unruliness they see all around them.

They're calling police when they see trouble, demanding and getting meetings with top Pitt and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center executives, and even running a strongly worded ad in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Tuesday calling for steps to be taken so that "the well-deserved respect for our community will be restored."

"My grandmother, she was in her 90s, and weather permitting, every day she would go outside and sweep the sidewalks, and my mother does the same," said Carlino Giampolo, 61, who lives part of the year with his elderly parents on Boundary Street and paid for the ad. "We grew up in that kind of clean environment, and I'd like that to continue throughout the entire community."

Right now, it doesn't. A trip down Boundary Street or the alleys behind South Bouquet Street shows conditions better than the illegal dumps present in some neighborhoods, but far short of clean-swept.

"I see some paper, some old boxes. I see something up there, I don't know what it is, it looks like a window," said Bob Casciato, 83, as he looked at the hillside behind 367 and 369 S. Bouquet St. "Some bottles. Underneath the steps, there's a container, a beer bottle. ... An empty case, they just leave it there."

At the bottom of Boundary Street, a bikeway runs into an unofficial parking lot, where cars sit helter-skelter on gravel and grass with trash and tires scattered about. Mr. Casciato wants the city to turn it into a greenway. "A few pin oaks, whatever, and no parking. It's already a bikeway. You could walk it -- safely."

"It seems like, in Oakland, the laws don't apply," said Ernie DeIuliis, who looks in weekly on his elderly parents on South Bouquet. "People can leave their garbage on the sidewalk for a week, and nothing happens."

The late Mayor Bob O'Connor launched an effort to clean up Oakland, and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl adopted it. As a result, last year through November the city had issued 1,245 code violation notices -- double what it issued in all of 2006 and five times the 2005 total. The increase was due in part to a tripling of resident complaints since 2005, but even more so due to a tenfold increase in the number of violations inspectors found on their own.

"I think that actually has helped," said Nathan Hart, president of the Oakland Community Council. So has Pitt's construction of more dormitories, which has tempered the demand for off-campus student rental housing.

Problems do continue, though. Kathy Boykowycz, vice president of the Oakland Community Council, has two properties near her home for which "the landlord couldn't care less what the students do. ... We feel that their properties are running us down."

Mr. Casciato sees the same problem. He said students have tossed chairs or potted plants out the window. One night his wife was standing in front of their house when "someone threw a couple of bottles down and smashed them on the steps."

He's one of the few old-timers who calls police. Others fear retaliation. "I've had two flat tires, been keyed," he said.

Mr. Ravenstahl in July called for better cooperation between the city and universities on policing off-campus behavior. Some of the Oakland homeowners report that they have, for the first time, gotten responses from Pitt police to their complaints.

The litter is another issue.

Mr. Giampolo said he met with Robert Kennedy, UPMC vice president of government relations, and, separately, with G. Reynolds Clark, Pitt's vice chancellor for community and government relations, about the persistence of trash. Neither would commit resources to daily cleanups of the areas where homeowners and students collide, he said.

"That keystone suggestion has been stonewalled by UPMC, dismissed by the University of Pittsburgh, and ignored by the mayor," he said.

"I do know, and appreciate, and really agree with the need for a collaborative effort," Mr. Ravenstahl said. "I think that the administration and the University of Pittsburgh have begun to do that with some building code enforcement in Oakland."

Pitt did not respond to questions.

UPMC helps pay for daily cleaning of the Oakland business district, and helps fund affordable housing in the neighborhood, wrote Frank Raczkiewicz, acting director of public relations for the hospital system, in response to questions.

Mr. Casciato said there's precedent for the Italian community, the city and the big institutions working together. They teamed up to make a pleasant green space next to the Panther Hollow parking lot. It features a plaque listing some 100 families who came to the area from Pizzoferrato and Gamberale, two towns in the Abruzzo region, and benches painted Italian red, white and green.

Now, though, he's thinking of selling his home. There's just not enough of the old neighborhood left. "We're running out of pall bearers," he said.