I don't know if anyone caught the story on In Your Corner a couple of weeks ago about the Enid couple, but it seems that the Enid code office contacted this family and told them if they didn't get their house fixed up they would be tearing it down - 9 days before Christmas, mind you.
This family had an agreement with a contractor to put new siding on their house and garage - they met with him three years ago and the contractor told them they would need to take out a second mortgage on their home in order to pay him half of his money up front. They did and they gave him $12,000. Then he never did anything, so here they are three years later, still making mortgage payments and no work has been done.
Now, this house is 94 years old and it does look like it could use some freshening up. But it's really not that bad. There's never any trash in the yard, the yard is always maintained, and there are never any junk cars sitting around. The ONLY thing is that the old shingle siding looks rough. BUT, this house happens to be in a neighborhood on WEST Oklahoma among other houses that are pretty freshly painted, etc.
When channel 4 got involved, the code office changed their tune a bit and said if they continued to make progress they would extend the deadline until March. How very kind of them not to put these people out on the street quite yet.
Let me tell you a little about these folks - they both work hard and are very kind and they have kids. They don't make a lot but they get by OK and they are well adjusted folks as are their children. They tried to take care of the issue three years ago and got scammed by this contractor guy.
It turns out that the contractor has done this to other people and the state is now prosecuting him on several counts of home repair fraud. Did the City of Enid care? NO, the woman went to talk to the code office and ended up leaving in tears because the lady there was so rude to her. They were going to tear down their house because it simply wasn't pretty enough.
A man saw the story and called the family. He is a contractor from OKC and said he had a couple of crews and things were slow, so he was going to come to Enid and fix their house for free. What a blessing!
I was happy to see there were people that were kind and willing to help these people that got screwed by no fault of their own and appalled that their own city would seriously threaten to tear down their house 9 days before Christmas and put them on the street.
My real problem with all of this is that I drive down N. 4th every now & then and can count at least ten to twenty houses in a row that should be condemned, yet they sit and rot and cause an eyesore. I see houses and buildings all over this town that are in awful condition yet they sit and look like crap. This house happens to be in a neighborhood where most of the houses look pretty darn nice. THAT is why I think this whole thing smacks of nothing more than downright snobbery. If it were on the east side in the middle of N. 4th no one would probably even notice because it's a darn sight better than all of those places. It's old siding - that's IT. And they were seriously going to demolish a house because someone's siding doesn't look as good as the neighbors??? That is a crock and I am ashamed that's how Enid operates.
SO - with that said, when these crews come to help fix up the house, they may need some help serving sandwiches or something.
This family had an agreement with a contractor to put new siding on their house and garage - they met with him three years ago and the contractor told them they would need to take out a second mortgage on their home in order to pay him half of his money up front. They did and they gave him $12,000. Then he never did anything, so here they are three years later, still making mortgage payments and no work has been done.
Now, this house is 94 years old and it does look like it could use some freshening up. But it's really not that bad. There's never any trash in the yard, the yard is always maintained, and there are never any junk cars sitting around. The ONLY thing is that the old shingle siding looks rough. BUT, this house happens to be in a neighborhood on WEST Oklahoma among other houses that are pretty freshly painted, etc.
When channel 4 got involved, the code office changed their tune a bit and said if they continued to make progress they would extend the deadline until March. How very kind of them not to put these people out on the street quite yet.
Let me tell you a little about these folks - they both work hard and are very kind and they have kids. They don't make a lot but they get by OK and they are well adjusted folks as are their children. They tried to take care of the issue three years ago and got scammed by this contractor guy.
It turns out that the contractor has done this to other people and the state is now prosecuting him on several counts of home repair fraud. Did the City of Enid care? NO, the woman went to talk to the code office and ended up leaving in tears because the lady there was so rude to her. They were going to tear down their house because it simply wasn't pretty enough.
A man saw the story and called the family. He is a contractor from OKC and said he had a couple of crews and things were slow, so he was going to come to Enid and fix their house for free. What a blessing!
I was happy to see there were people that were kind and willing to help these people that got screwed by no fault of their own and appalled that their own city would seriously threaten to tear down their house 9 days before Christmas and put them on the street.
My real problem with all of this is that I drive down N. 4th every now & then and can count at least ten to twenty houses in a row that should be condemned, yet they sit and rot and cause an eyesore. I see houses and buildings all over this town that are in awful condition yet they sit and look like crap. This house happens to be in a neighborhood where most of the houses look pretty darn nice. THAT is why I think this whole thing smacks of nothing more than downright snobbery. If it were on the east side in the middle of N. 4th no one would probably even notice because it's a darn sight better than all of those places. It's old siding - that's IT. And they were seriously going to demolish a house because someone's siding doesn't look as good as the neighbors??? That is a crock and I am ashamed that's how Enid operates.
SO - with that said, when these crews come to help fix up the house, they may need some help serving sandwiches or something.
4 comments:
By the way, the newspaper is now involved in this story since I posted it over there on the message board. Woo hoo!
I think that this is pure BS...I do not see how the City of Enid can do this unless they want to make your mortgage payments they need to shut up. Last time I looked we live in the United States and are afforded certain freedoms. This "clean-up campaign" is a instrument of the realtors to clean up the community so they can keep real estate prices high and they can make more money. Some of the houses that have been reported are ridiculous. I am waiting to see when I am going to get a letter!
I am hoping that one of the things we can bring to the new batch of city council members is some kind of reform of this practice.
You write very well.
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