VBT tears down unfinished house after 9 years of ‘construction’

Theresa Cassini’s “new” house at 16620 Haggerty Road was torn down on Nov. 30 with Van Buren Township police and ordinance officials standing by, along with township attorney Angela Mannarino.
Also standing by was Cassini, who claimed the problem had been with the foundation and the VBT Building Department had approved the faulty foundation and now is trying to destroy the evidence.
Cassini, who lives in Inkster, said she has more than $200,000 invested in this house.
Neighbors also were outside watching the destruction on Monday and said they were happy to see the house being torn down since it had been under construction for a decade and a constant eyesore. They said the blight was never-ending and there were rats that came over from the empty house to their properties.
“There was violation of so many township ordinances,” said attorney Mannarino. “This is not what we wanted to do, but this was only force of action we could take. We spent years working with her and she didn’t work with us.”
“We did not want to do this,” agreed VBT Police Lt. Charles Bazzy. “But we’ve done everthing we could to try to solve the problem.”
He explained the long, involved series of events that led to this day.
Lt. Bazzy said in late November 2005, the original home burned and in 2006, Cassini got a building permit to reconstruct the home. The permit expired in 2007 and it was reissued in 2008. Then it expired in 2009.
Since then, the house has been sitting there unfinished.
Mannarino said under the township ordinance if construction ceases for a year or the building is deemed unsafe the building can be torn down. She said Cassini tried to get her property tax reduced and her own engineer condemned the structure.
Lt. Bazzy, who oversees the township’s ordinance department, said there were a number of ordinance violations for blight in 2014 and two court-ordered cleanups were done. But the blight continued.
He said the basement was not poured, the porch unsafe, no power to the house, a perpetually open window had animals coming in and out, and other problems. The house was full of all kinds of things because Cassini is a hoarder, he said, noting when they cleaned out one storage shed in back of the house there were 10 old mattresses inside.
He said that morning, they checked inside the house to make sure Cassini wasn’t inside before beginning the demolition and there was even more stuff inside.
Lt. Bazzy said in August 2014 there was a meeting of VBT Supervisor Linda Combs, VBT Public Safety Director Greg Laurain, Lt. Bazzy and Cassini. Lt. Bazzy said they were seeking a resolution to the problem.
Lt. Bazzy said the township officials wanted her to put on siding and do other finishing work and she agreed, saying she would have it done by December.
“We had a hellacious winter and so we gave her until March 2015,” Lt. Bazzy said. He said she had taken out no permits for the work and no work was done, so violations were issued.
She took the township to court to get her property tax reduced and her engineer and appraiser said the foundation was defective, Mannarino said. The township lost and it was decided the township could only tax the land and that the structure had no value.
The township responded that because she claimed the building was uninhabitable and should be torn down, she should tear it down, Lt. Bazzy said. She didn’t answer that notice and filed no appeal with the Construction Board of Appeals.
Cassini filed for and got an injunction against the township to keep the house from being destroyed. But, after the judge heard the case, the judge said he would never have issued the original restraining order if he knew the whole story. He dismissed her injunction completely, Lt. Bazzy said, and the township moved toward demolition.
Lt. Bazzy said Cassini sued the contractor who built the house and he counter-sued and won a verdict of $60,000.
Lt. Bazzy said Citicorp had held the mortgage on the house since 1997 and didn’t know the house had burned down. Last week the bank dismissed its opposition to the house razing, Lt. Bazzy said.
So, finally, the house was torn down.