Skip to footer

Wrong house demolished: Homeowners billed, condemned house still there

Wrong house demolished: A Texas contractor skipped past a condemned house to demolish the three-bedroom home next door – and then billed for the demolition.

  • By Associated Press

| FORT WORTH, Texas

A demolition company has mistakenly torn down a three-bedroom home in North Texas rather than the condemned building next door.

David Underwood and his wife placed their Fort Worth house on the market with the intention of moving into the retreat they purchased near the shores of Lake Worth. The lakeside land has been in the family for decades and Underwood bought it from an aunt earlier this year.

But when they stopped by to mow the lawn Saturday, they found the home was gone. A slab of foundation remained.

Fort Worth hired the demolition company to raze the condemned building, and was billed more than $6,000 for the work.

The condemned structure remains standing.

Underwood is seeking a settlement from the city. A city spokesman says officials are investigating.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Wrong house demolished: Homeowners billed, condemned house still there
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0718/Wrong-house-demolished-Homeowners-billed-condemned-house-still-there
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe