Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Once again the City of Austin is living up to its reputation as a Nanny State busybody who can’t keep its nose out of other people’s business. In this case it’s decided that Joe Del Rio can’t dig under his own house.

Joe Del Rio, the retiree who excavated a huge pit underneath his East Austin home that prompted a raid by SWAT and bomb squad officers last month, is suing the city for taking his private property by filling in the hole, his lawyer said Thursday.

Earlier this week, Austin city officials had ordered the collection of tunnels and rooms, which they have characterized as a 35-foot-deep multilevel underground structure, filled with concrete to prevent Del Rio’s house from collapsing. Work crews for a private contractor were scheduled to begin filling in the underground space this morning, which officials said would take about 33 truckloads of concrete.

A spokeswoman for the Public Works Department said the estimated cost of filling Del Rio’s pit is about $61,500. The city will pay for the work and then bill Del Rio, Sara Hartley said.

In a mid-May report, city engineers, citing deep excavation under load-bearing walls and scant reinforcement of walls in the pit, declared that Del Rio’s home was “in imminent danger of collapse.”

Demolishing the home, they said in the report, would almost certainly cause a cave-in, so filling in the pit was the only option.

Here’s a Google Street View of the House.

There are also pictures, but they offer a considerably less-than-comprehensive view. (Notice how the photos from the City of Austin Code Compliance Department are carefully chosen not to give you a good idea of the layout of the space, but to make it look as ugly and haphazard as possible.)

Note that nowhere in the article does it say that Mr. Del Rio’s house is a danger to anyone but Mr. Del Rio himself. So the City of Austin comes in with guns drawn, seizes the man’s house, and is about to spend $61,000 and bill Del Rio to perform work he doesn’t want to save him from himself.

I’m not saying that Del Rio’s excavations were necessarily the smartest move in the world, and I’m not advocating people go out of their way to flaunt building codes. But government exists to protect citizens from being victimized by others, not to protect people from themselves. Unless Mr. Del Rio’s actions are a danger to others (say, if he was undermining a city street), the City of Austin should leave him the hell alone.

(Hat tip: Fark.)