Until this week, there was a house at 1621 Nixon St. 

Once, it had been a home to someone, that much was clear.

In the overgrown backyard, upside down, lay part of a doghouse. Near a sagging shed, a mauve pet-food bowl. Next to the driveway, a basketball pole, sans backboard and rim and, in front of the house, next to a ditch, an old baseball. 

Though the house’s windows were mostly smashed, and despite the fact that one linoleum-covered flood sagged almost to the soil inches below, despite the rank, wet odor of mildew, it was also clear the house was, if not a home, a shelter for someone. 

Around back, a few feet below a smashed window, someone had stacked two cinderblocks on top of each other. Inside the filthy room someone had bunched together a tarp. It was bunched in a shape of a person, with a fat, padded spot near the top; a place to lay one’s head.

All of that is gone now.

On Tuesday, shortly after 8 a.m., city workers tore the house down and hauled the debris away. None of the city employees could say offhand what had happened to the house or the family that once resided there, but Code Enforcement Officer Tom Milar had a pretty good idea of what was going on in the house recently. 

“If we went through the house, we’d probably find all kinds of evidence of drug paraphernalia,” Milar said, several minutes before the house came down. 

The house isn’t on the city’s land, but on the Picayune School District’s land. School districts in Mississippi make money from their land, which they lease out. Mostly the land is leased by farmers, storeowners or hunters, but sometimes it is leased by people who build homes on the land.

Lisa Persick, the district’s director of finance and 16th section land manager, said banks don’t typically loan money for people to build homes on land they’ll never own, but it does happen. And it also sometimes happens that those homes get abandoned. This is the third house the city has torn down for the school district. The last teardown was back in February, and Persick said she thinks this will be the last for a while.

“I don’t think we have any others in this condition,” she said. “The city has been very helpful in helping us with this.”

All were taken down with the help of the city. 

For the school district and the city, this is a good partnership. 

The problem for the school district is, it doesn’t have the heavy machinery the city has, or the money to hire a contractor to demolish a house and haul away the debris.

Milar said he is happy to help the district and have the houses out of the neighborhoods. Tearing down the homes makes neighborhoods more attractive and it keeps them safer, he said. And he, too, appreciates the value for the district.

“We’re just trying to save the taxpayers money,” he said. “Everyone complains about their taxes.”

Milar estimates the school district is saving $6,000 to $8,000 by not using a contractor. 

This is not to say the district spends nothing in the process, they do. The school district will pay for the disposal of the debris, which is $30 per ton.

Milar asked one of the men on the teardown crew how many tons the house on Nixon might be, and he guessed 50. 

All the bricks, wood, shingles, glass, the old baby seat, the two televisions inside the house, the ironing board and the nest made of a tarp would be buried for $1,500.

By Tuesday afternoon, the house was gone.