A skilled carpenter’s Georgia home was unexpectedly demolished without any notice or compensation from the county.
Eric Arnold, from New Jersey, decided to pack up and move to Georgia to live where his mother grew up. He took on multiple home renovation projects, including the property in Macon-Bibb County.
He bought the house in 2022 for $15,000 and started improving it to make it a future home for his children and grandchildren.
But his plans were shattered when a neighbor called Arnold to ask about a dumpster that had been place on his property.
Carpenter Eric Arnold was in shock when Macon-Bibb County demolished his home in 2023
Arnold filed a lawsuit against the county and alleges it was unconstitutional to destroy his house
He told the Institute for Justice: ‘I felt a bad vibe that something was wrong and I felt it right through the spirit of my soul.
‘That’s when all hell broke loose.’
After two months of confusion and mixed signals from country officials, Arnold’s home was demolished on November 15, 2023.
He filed a lawsuit against the county, alleging that his home’s destruction was unconstitutional.
He told the Institute for Justice: ‘When you knock something down like that and destroy families, he just destroyed my whole generation. Now I have nothing.
Arnold’s neighbor alerted him of a dumpster outside of his house in September 2023
Arnold spent years cleaning up and renovating the property
‘When I pulled up and saw the house demolished, I was devastated. My heart started racing, I was tearing up, I started sweating.’
Macon-Bibb county has a blight problem, but instead of working with community residents toward a solution or communicating their plans, they simply resort to knocking down houses.
Blighted properties are those seen as a disruption to the surrounding area, according to the Center for Community Progress.
Arnold argued that he was in the process of fixing the home. He had completely transformed it from its original state.
The county prides itself on its anti-blighting efforts and has destroyed 800 houses
In the last three years, more than 800 homes were destroyed in the county, according to the filed lawsuit.
In the past five years, Macon-Bibb county has enacted several anti-blight efforts including demolitions and increased taxes on blighted properties.
Arnold’s lawyers claim that he is not the only victim of house demolition in the area.
He told WMAZ-TV: ‘They took my dignity away from me, like I wasn’t even a person. They took my dignity away from me, like I wasn’t even a person.’
There have been at least nine other lawsuit against the county for similar situations, according to the Atlanta Black Star.
Macon-Bibb county officials told The Macon Telegraph that despite Arnold’s claims, he was given ample notice about the demolition.
The devastated homeowner holds up a photo of what his property looked like before it was demolished
But a source of confusion could be the fact that the house was listed under a previous owner’s name.
In the lawsuit, it is also mentioned that Assistant County Attorney Frank Howard told Arnold he could go to jail for renovating his home without a license and proceeded offensively to ask, ‘What are you going to do — make Macon Black again?’
Other officials contradicted Howard and said that Arnold did not need a license to renovate the home.