NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: City Boards Up Foreclosed Home, Trapping Its Resident Inside
Several months after the financially troubled Fannie Mae foreclosed on the only home Ted Poetsch has ever known, the city of Minneapolis condemned the “elegant, gabled Victorian,” and told him to vacate the premises, reports the Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul):
On May 12, the day the city inspector came to board up his house, Ted Poetsch was eating lunch. After living all of his 53 years at 823 Penn Av. N., Poetsch had an hour left to pack his stuff and get out.
Cane in hand, he lurched around, throwing a few things in bags, putting Kitty in the carrier. He heard the contractor outside starting to drill into the door frame. …
He came to the door and realized that he was too late. A truck had driven away from the house, prompting those outside to think the tenants were gone. Poetsch had been boarded up inside his house.
City officials say Poetsch had ample warning that they were coming that day, but they say his brief incarceration was an unprecedented mistake. …
Monica Castrejon, a representative of the contractor, Castrejon Inc., said her company was directed to board the front and back doors.
"We do the job," she said. "We don't make the decisions."
It's the city's job to ensure the place is empty when the boards go on, she said.
JoAnn Velde, deputy director of city housing inspections, tells the Star Tribune that “the contractor typically yells into the house before the boards go on” rather than going room to room in a potentially unsafe structure looking for occupants.
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