Property owner demolishes home, cleans up property before city deadline

The long standoff between a Corbin property owner and city officials regarding the condition of his house and surrounding property has finally ended.

The dilapidated two-story home, rickety sheds and piles of what neighbors and others described as “junk” are gone — replaced now with nothing but bare ground and straw to cover freshly seeded grass.

The work was completed over a two-day period last week. But it was over six months in the coming, and years overdue, city leaders said.

The property owner, 84-year-old Lawrence Johnson, said all of his valuable possessions had been moved out of the house to a new location and he plans to live in Gray.

“I appreciate the consideration everybody has given me in the past,” Johnson said last Thursday as a crew from Dixon Excavating hauled off the water-damaged, mold-infested remains of his Ruggles Street house.

“I think I am very satisfied with everything. I have done everything I was supposed to do. I want everyone to know that.”

The structure, and small patch of smelly, trash-choked property around it, drew the ire of neighbors and city officials alike who had been trying for months to get Johnson to do something about it.

Jerry Engle, who lives in a mobile home right next to Johnson, said he put up with the foul odors and blighted appearance of the property for years. The breaking point was when a portion of Johnson’s fence fell on his three-year old daughter about a year ago, injuring her. He also claims a tree from Johnson’s property fell over and destroyed his above-ground pool.

“You know, I told him if he wanted to live like that it was fine. The only thing I ever asked of the man is that he put up an eight-foot fence around his property so we couldn’t see it,” Engle said. “When his fence fell on my daughter, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I went to the city about it and complained. I want to thank the city manager Marlon Sams and everyone else for getting this cleaned up. It took about a year, but they got it done.”

Johnson was cited for property maintenance violations late last year and paid a $125 fine. The city’s Code Enforcement Board reviewed the case and ordered that Johnson immediately bring the house and surrounding property into compliance because of imminent safety concerns.

Johnson attended monthly Code Enforcement Board meetings pleading for more time, but officials said he made little progress despite being given five month of extensions on the order. In May, the board did not authorize any more extensions, meaning the Corbin Board of Commissioners had the right to authorize the city’s Public Works Department, or an outside contractor, to clean up the property.

Johnson acted mere days before the city’s June 9 deadline came.

One of Johnson’s neighbors, a man who gave only the name “Bear,” said the condition of the property had been perplexing and frustrating to everyone in the neighborhood.

“This guy was a packrat to the nth degree,” Bear said. “He has been collecting this junk since he bought this place in 1984.”
“There was just no reasoning with him … to him, all that stuff he had in there was gold. That’s the way it is with hoarders.”

Bear said he was aggravated by recent television news stories that he felt painted Johnson as a helpless victim of an overbearing city government. Some of Johnson’s supporters attended the May meeting of the Corbin City Commission to defend Johnson. They even went to his property, for a short time, to help him move some of his “valuables.”

“The TV reporters wouldn’t talk to any of us … his neighbors,” Bear said. “These people that were making him out to be a hero their ain’t his neighbors. They don’t live around here. They didn’t live next to this landfill we had. We tried to help him and he didn’t want our help.”

At the Monday meeting of the Corbin Code Enforcement Board, Sams and Corbin Building Inspector Frank Burke said Johnson had satisfactorily completed cleanup of the property.