davyravygravy

As I said already, they don't actually answer emails.  Tried contacting that department couple of times.  It's laughable really.

No you are reading this completely wrong.  I am not looking for the city to pay for anything.  I was just looking for some 'incentive' or reason if you prefer not to tear down yet another property.  I haven't found one.  No one cares in this city, lot of people who even claim to have an historical interest in the place seem much too smug when it comes down to it.  Ah well.  Another one bites the dust then.  No doubt the city will enjoy the massive influx of exaggerated home taxes as yet more of these concrete disasters are thrown up in the neighborhoods.  Which oddly enough is another problem with the city, the older homes are being charged excessive taxes, which leaves little option for most people but to sell up and see their homes torn down.  In any sane place, owners of historical homes would be encouraged not to demolish them, perhaps even with tax breaks.  The city of Houston is much too greedy however.  By the way I'm a builder, I know what a rubbish building is when I look at one.  If it's concrete it's rubbish, with a life of 25 years.  So it's goodbye to charm, elegance and pretty gardens in some neighborhoods, and hello to concrete driveways to a house that is more garage than home, with a shrub beside it which somehow wins 'yard of the week' in the local homeowners association.  Seeing all this has made me quite cynical.

Maybe I'm posting in the right place, maybe I'm not, but hear me out, because it seems in this city I cannot find anyone who will listen.  My biggest greivance about how things are done in this city is that most of the people in particular positions never respond to emails, ever.  This is at all levels right up to the Mayor's department.  I have a property in Midtown, the home of a WW1 photographer, he's not too well known for his art, since he worked as a postman most of his life, but he left an interesting collection of photographs of Texas and her military, histrorical costumes and buildings etc.  I may publish these at some point.  So I'm puzzling over tearing down his 67 year old home right now, or restoring it.  Thought that if I made a few phone calls sent off some emails I might get some replies which might give me some incentive to restore the home.  Oddly enough never got any replies from anyone.  I am beginning to understand now, why it is that others just give up and sell out their lots to builders so that huge ugly concrete homes can be erected in neighborhoods where once there was elegance and charm.  Those new homes of course will look pretty bad in 25-30 years, despite what people are paying for them now.  Once the last of these historical homes are gone, there's no way of bringing them back again.