Suffolk, Va. - A Suffolk landowner says the city wants to impose a separate, residential tax on an old, dilapidated house that has sat vacant on his property for around 60 years.
Charles Daughtrey has lived on the farm all 77 years of his life.
He says the house has always been taxed as part of his 148 acre farm. But if the city separates it from the rest of his property, his yearly taxes could double or even triple. He says some of his fellow neighbors are going through a similar situation.
"I know a whole lot more buildings like that around here. Folks don't even use them, just sitting there and I know they gonna tax'em," says Charles Daughtrey.
He says the house is used as a hunt club a few months out of the year. But, he says, there’s no road to get to it and it doesn’t have an address. Inside, Daughtrey showed NewsChannel 3 wires hanging from a boarded up ceiling. He also says the house isn’t insulated.
“Ain't no way you can live in there. I don't think so,” said Daughtrey.
Daughtrey says his father had this house built back in the early 1900's.
He says he will knock it down before paying a residential tax on it. But he won't forget about the hunters that use it.
"I'm gonna build a trailer, a nice trailer 15-foot long, 12-foot wide at my house and pull it here in the fall in September when hunting season open in October."
