Theo alerted me to this some time ago but I don’t consider InShaw as a news blog so I encouraged him to send it to a larger medium like a neighborhood listserv. He did better, the Washington City Paper ran a story on the fiasco that is at 1427 5th St., NW, along with some other houses in the Shaw area that have endangered neighboring buildings because the houses are old and the contractors ignorant or cheap, or both.
I’m amazed that my crumbly pile of bricks I call home stands. It’s over 130 years old and some of the bricks are like sand. Red sand. So I’m guessing a mix of the wood beams, flooring, the bricks that aren’t sand and several Sunday prayers keep this thing up. Remove the wood and there is little to keep it steady. It’s already leaning.
These houses are old. Some 100 years old. Some older than that. Some haven’t fallen over due to minimal maintenance or due to the fact the structure hasn’t been stressed or strained. Just cause it survived the riots and the crack years doesn’t mean it will survive an idiot with a sledge hammer.
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That is insanely scary.
Not only is the house falling down, but it’s not covered by insurance.
Even if you win the lawsuit that will inevitably follow, the chances are that the contractor doesn’t have insurance that will pay up.
And so you wind up with a huge mortgage, no house, and a lot that you have to pay to fix.
Scary scary stuff.
Um, I’m secretly very glad I live in a high rise about now..