South MS resident believes city undermined his house. Now he’s relying on friends for help
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Bob Kiesau once loved his home in the Parktown subdivision of Ocean Springs.
He especially enjoyed watching football games on his shaded back porch while drinking a cold beer. Mature trees along the east property line shaded a table and chairs that sat in the backyard, which overlooked 40 acres of woods.
Today, the house causes him nothing but worry. Kiesau dates all these troubles to a drainage project the city undertook around 2016. He had no luck going to the city for help.
A four-bedroom, two-bath house that should be worth more $250,000, he said, most recently appraised at only $75,000.
A group of Ocean Springs residents is hoping to raise money through a GoFundMe account for repairs. They’ve so far collected $375 of a $73,000 goal, which is based on a contractor’s estimate.
What happened to Ocean Springs house?
At 83, Kiesau can only hope the fundraiser is successful. He’s been battling prostate cancer for seven years and wants to leave behind a livable home for his 13-year-old grandson and an adult family member who will finish raising the boy.
“It seems like I’ve been raising kids all my life,” said Kiesau, who divorced when his four children were young. He was a professional gambler when he was younger, he said, but eventually went to work in Las Vegas for Steve Wynn, then moved to the Mississippi Coast in 1999 to help open the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino.
Kiesau had retired by the time he lost one of his daughters in 2016 to a brain aneurysm. He adopted one of her children, Hayden. Around the same time, he lost his brother and found out he had cancer.
Amid all this personal tragedy, his troubles with the house started. The city wanted to cut down three mature trees beside his ditch, he said, but he told the workers no. Then he came home one day to find 12 grown trees uprooted and gone.
Next, he said, the city widened the ditch the trees had stood beside from about 3 feet to 16 feet. Since then, his yard has been eroding into the ditch. The ground is sinking, he said, and so is the foundation of his house.
City work causes flooding, homeowner says
A small culvert that empties the wide ditch is choked with weeds. In the past, the ditch has flooded his yard during heavy rainfall. During one of those floods, water inundated his outdoor air conditioning units. He no longer has central heat and air, relying on window units and space heaters.
Even worse, the slab on his back porch is cracked and tiles in his den keep cracking. After replacing the tiles twice, he now has them covered with an area rug in front of the couch. Cabinet doors won’t close properly and his front door no longer lines up with the frame.
His friend and neighbor, Buddy Wyatt, has witnessed all these problems. Wyatt doesn’t understand why the city hasn’t done more to shore up the ditch, as it has in other areas, putting more rock and even adding cement in some places.
The Sun Herald’s call to the Public Works Department was not returned. The current administration was not involved with the project.
Kiesau said city representatives assured him after problems surfaced that they would be rectified. He said he waited until it was too late to file a lawsuit against the city because, he was told, the statute of limitations had expired.
The friends of Kiesau raising money for him on gofundme got an estimate for repairs, which would include stabilizing the house’s foundation.
The decline of Kiesau’s home is never far from his mind, especially as his cancer advances and he worries about his grandson’s future.
“I sure would like to get this place fixed before I pass away,” he said.
This story was originally published August 7, 2024 at 9:49 AM.
