Originally published at: Woman returns from vacation to find Atlanta house demolished | Boing Boing
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Boarded up for 15 years?
I have no sympathy.
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I have sympathy.
15 years of maintenance and taxes and the neighbors are willing to go to bat for it.
I expect there is much more to the back story.
Lets see what would cause a family to keep and maintain a home without living in it.
Estate/Probate issues. Hopefully not for 15 years.
Primary Resident in a long term care facility.
Family heirloom. Remember, it is maintained.
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Why not? The homeowners aren’t the ones who did anything wrong here. The demolition company didn’t even bother to check that they had the correct address.
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can’t wait for a PR from You Call It We Haul It saying they take their customer’s property seriously before waving away all responsibility.
when that happens, looks like it is time to start knocking down some houses since apparently it is quite a fine thing to do.
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Oof, that’s pretty harsh.
I have sympathy. I know we’re facing housing issues in this country, but I don’t blame people like this trying to keep a modest family home in the family.
It would be so jarring for this to happen. And what if they had mementos still in the house? Heartbreaking.
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Plus “tearing down a usable home” isn’t exactly a productive way to address a housing shortage.
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That house was demolished by mistake too. The city hall expropriated some residences to carry out revitalization works at the site. The residents received financial compensation and left the site. Only one lady contested the compensation amounts. One day, while she was away from home, a crew mistakenly demolished her home…
After being shot at home by criminals, a man decides to take his family out of town. While he was away, the city decided to demolish the property with all the furniture, appliances, documents and other family belongings.
I think all these houses were very similar to each other. They were confused very easily. If only there was a way to indicate the correct location of every house or building in a city. I hope artificial intelligence can help us.
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My family has some rural farm land, about a quarter mile from the house by grandparent lived in there was another house that was long ago used by my great-grandparents, then it sat empty for decades, then one of my uncles lived there with his family, then when he moved away it sat empty again, then another uncle lived there for a few years. It’s currently empty again, but it’s still maintained. It had definitely been unoccupied for more than 15 years at a stretch, but it has remained in the family and has multiple times been used by members of the family that needed it.
I don’t know the full context of the house in this story, but I know if my great-grandparents house was torn down just because no-one was living in it right now my family would be livid, not just for the loss of some property, but for the destruction of my families history.
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“Measure twice, cut once” is an excellent adage that has applications outside carpentry.
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Maybe they Will blame the military.
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Yeah, there should be multiple levels of verification involved before a home gets demolished. Including photos of the house in question being verified as the correct address, both on site and by the person on the deed, the latter via email or chat if necessary.
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Even if an house isn’t usable as this moment have a pile of rubble instead makes mode difficult to make it usable.
I remember a luxury house with swimming pool that remained closed for 15 years or so, and was because the family that lived here died in a car crash. Every so often a lumberjack got there and cut the plants and the grass. Eventually the house got sold and after some works now there’s people living there. But repainting the walls, retile the the roof, put the electric system up to code and put a new hvac system instead of the old furnace costs way less than buildind an house from the ground up.
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Back when I lived in the city (in an older house in a historic area) I learned very quickly that the city likes to target specific groups of people to pick property issues with. Namely the ones they think have enough money to pay. Looking deeper into the laws that surround property maintenance an unoccupied residence could draw the ire of the local municipality. Yes the property was maintained, but I know if this house was where I used to live it would have been cited heavily for boarded up windows, or broken windows, or damaged siding. If the house wasn’t in a habitable state the city had the power to condemn the property and force the owner to bring it up to standards or have it demolished at their expense.
I mean if I drive to the outer areas of the county I can find uninhabitable structures. The city / county doesn’t do anything with them because they know there is no money in it. At best you see a condemned sign and warning to keep out.
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Are you president of your HOA, or only treasurer? Come on, now.
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No. I’m a person living in a city where property developers deliberately hoard land and houses and allow houses to go derelict in order to redevelop them some time in the future when the profit margin is what they consider appropriate.
Fuck land hoarders.
Fuck landlords.
Living in a crappy city? I have no sympathy.
See how that feels? This wasn’t a developer hoarding houses, and you know it. Hence my comment. Have a better one.
