City Demolishes House Without Warning Owner

CHICAGO (CBS) - Imagine one day you own a building and the next day it's gone -- demolished by the city without any notice.

That's what happened to one Chicago woman.

Frances Funches owned a house in the city's Austin neighborhood. She had tenants lined up to move in Oct. 1.

But in late September, someone apparently set fire to the back of the house. She filed a claim. Her insurance adjuster was assessing the damage. But less than two weeks later, she got word: Her house was gone.

"It was totally unbelievable," she told CBS 2's Dana Kozlov.

Funches had no choice but to accept reality. Her house had been bulldozed without a trace. An empty lot remains.

"It's two tragedies in one," she said.

It all happened less than two weeks after fire ripped through the back of her building. Funches says her insurance company was on the case. The home was boarded up. But the city stepped in, anyway. So Funches hired Mable Taylor to help get some answers.

"Times are hard," Taylor said. "It's difficult to own property, and you're going to take it away from me without due process? I'm outraged."

City Building Department spokesman Bill McCaffery says due process didn't really apply in this case. He says after the fire, an inspector cited the house as dangerous and hazardous -- a threat to the community.

The city ordered an emergency demolition, standard operating procedure, he said."How could the city take down a home and not make the owner aware of it?" Funches countered.

That is also standard operating procedure, according to McCaffery. He says inspectors check the city's database for owner information. In this case, none was found. So down the house went.