Stripping Foreclosed Homes
The Star Tribune in Minneapolis recently reported on a historically designated home that has fallen into foreclosure. That is bad enough, but apparently thieves have broken in and pretty much stripped the place of all the cool details that made it historical. This is really sad, and is something that preservation forces should be on watch for happening in other areas. However, this isn’t limited to just historical homes. In many parts of the country, such as Detroit, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, vandels (or the foreclosed owners themselves) are stripping homes of anything of value such as sinks, toilets, light fixtures, cabinets, even furnaces. I remember when I was looking for my first home during that last real estate meltdown in Denver in the late 1980’s, I found some places with the same thing…no cabinets, light fixtures, etc. Pretty sad.
In Suprise, AZ though, they are beginning to prosecute people for this, as reported by Jay Thompson on his blog, The Phoenix Real Estate Guy.
December 3rd, 2015 at 10:29 am
CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDEWall of Oil Barrels, Iron Curtain, Rue Visconti, Paris, 1962During 8 hours on the evening of June 27, 1962, Christo and Jeanne-Claude clsoed the RueVisconti with 240 oil barrels.The art barricade was 4.3 x 3.8 x 1.7 meters (14 x 12.5 x 5.6 feet). It obstructed most of the traffic of the Paris Left Bank.The artists did not alter the industrial colors of the oil barrels, leaving the brand names and the rust visible.Rue Visconti is one of the narrowest streets in Paris. Since the sixteenth century many illustrious tenants lived in the houses of the Rue Visconti, such as Racine, Adrienne Lecouvreur, Delacroix and Balzac.The Berlin Wall had been built in August of 1961 and Algerian War protest demonstrations and barricades were taking place in Paris at the same time as Christo and Jeanne-Claude created the temporary work of art.