Scuzzbucket of the Week

Early in the week for this one, but around here the scuzzbuckets seem to just pop out of the soil as fast as the weeds after a good rain.



Veronica White is the head of the New Orleans Sanitation Department which supposedly oversees city-authorized teardowns.

Over the weekend, Mizz White's department totally screwed up, according to newspaper report .


The pile of rubble that a city-hired wrecking crew left at 5132 Kendall Drive in Gentilly Woods on Saturday was supposed to be the DeJan family's new home.

Erica DeJan and her husband, Brian, bought the two-story structure just around the corner from their current home in June and jumped right into rehabbing it.
So it came as a surprise Friday when Erica DeJan, who is nearly eight months pregnant with her fourth child, found a sticker on the house stating that Mayor Ray Nagin's administration had declared it a public health threat and planned to tear it down.

DeJan does not dispute that before she and her husband bought it, the property was a nuisance. "It hadn't been touched since Katrina," she said. "It had just been sitting."

The DeJans, though, had already gutted the house and replaced termite-damaged wood, she said. While the couple had enough money to remodel the existing structure, they cannot afford to rebuild from scratch. She laid blame for the improper demolition on a City Hall system ill-equipped to honor last-minute reprieves.

A spokeswoman for the company that tore down the house, Beck Disaster Recovery of Orlando, Fla., said the firm was notified that Saturday's demolition had been canceled.

DeJan said a city employee should have confirmed directly with the wrecking crew that her property had been crossed off Saturday's work order.

"It's just a lack of communication," DeJan said. "It's not being on the same wavelength."

This is not the first time old Ronnie's department has shown ineptitude. check out this from Squandered Heritage .