Report that children were living in such filth?
For all they knew the family had moved out sometime ago and left the door open for transients to move in.
Heck some people have put their repossessed houses on Craig's List for other people to trash.
I once had to repo a house and had to hunt down the owner who was living two states away. He was sending the payments to his brother so he could pay the mortgage. From the look of things the money was going straight to the local liquor store.
The world of repossessed real estate is a strange one.