A county in Georgia is being sued for destroying a man’s home while he was in the middle of a renovation project.
They had been sent by the Macon-Bibb County officials to bulldoze the structure, under the claim that the work was part of a campaign to get rid of “blight.”
There had been no court proceedings, no notice and there has been no financial compensation, the IJ reported.
The county’s actions “violated Eric’s constitutional rights to notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard. To vindicate those rights and others, Eric has teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to sue Macon-Bibb County in state court.”
Lawyer Christie Hebert, who is working on the case, said, “Property rights are the bedrock of American society. To arbitrarily destroy Eric’s house without even the courtesy of letting him know is wrong ethically and wrong under the law.”
The IJ explained there was no reason to demolish the home.
“While he still had work to do, the yard was neat, the exterior was clean, the house was locked up, and, most importantly, it was in a vastly improved state of repair compared to when he purchased it. But the county demolished it anyway as part of its aggressive blight fight,” the IJ reported.
In fact, the county has destroyed more than 800 homes in recent years.
The destruction agenda is through a “fast-tracked, secret code enforcement process that completely avoids court proceedings and deprives property owners of a meaningful chance to protect their property. In some cases, like Eric’s, the county doesn’t even bother to notify the owners before knocking their house down.”
He had moved from New Jersey to Georgia to be closer to his family’s roots, and bought a fixer-upper.
He started on repairs immediately.
“To spend all that time and money and sweat and end up with nothing but a bare piece of land, it’s devastating,” said Eric. “What’s worse is that if I try to rebuild or buy another property, I have no guarantee this won’t happen again. It’s just not right.”
His notification came when a neighbor called and told him demolition crews were installing a dumpster at his home.
He pleaded with county officials to wait and provided documentation regarding his repairs and upgrades.
The county’s response was a squad of “armed code enforcement officers to ensure a property that was actively being restored was demolished in the name of the blight fight.”
The lawsuit is to hold county officials responsible for their constitutional violations and destruction of private property.
