In Our Neighborhood

We started watching House Hunters on HGTV at our younger daughter’s house while we were looking for our condo in Chicago and then we became hooked. So after we moved to Chicago and a new show premiered on HGTV called Windy City Rehab we were excited to check it out. We had watched a few episodes and when our niece who we knew liked to watch International House Hunters came to visit, we asked her if she’d like watch an episode. That episode turned out to be pretty exciting because the entire house fell down! “They didn’t brace it all!!!!! What did they expect?” my niece exclaimed. We figured they must have wanted it to fall down so we weren’t too surprised when we began to read of complaints from people (whose houses were in the same neighborhoods as the ones that were being remodeled) about the show and the cohosts HGTV personality Alison Victoria and contractor Donovan Eckhardt. It was a little more surprising when the city issued Stop Work Orders for several of the homes and when lawsuits involving both buyers and subcontractors were filed. The house with the unpaid subcontractor turned out to be in my neighborhood so of course I had to go take a look.