One of the photos shows what looks like a significant amount of land alteration on the opposite side of the highway.
We do not have the full story here.
The Bixby house has had low ceiling room added to the rear. The next door house has had the garage converted to a room. The stone house with the cathederal windows is most telling. Here you can see, on the front of the home, a vertical HVAC discharge duct that elbows into the attic. That duct is likely 18 gauge and is acting as support column. To the left of it you can see where the corner of the house has settled and above the duct there is a large crack where the roof and the eave attach.
From the article we know that Bixby bought the house in '94. I would suggest that at the time he bought the house, the road was already a traffic jam and anyone with common sense would conclude that the road would be widened eventually. Futhermore, in '94 the planning commission had likely already published their intent to widen the road. Municipal projects of this nature generally lag 15-20 years behind time.
Was Bixby taking a financial hit on this? Not hardly. Any loss of value as owner-occupied residential would not apply to the property as a rental unit. Addionally, the widening of the road would hasten the commercial value of the property, which will always be higher than residential.
These men are kooks and anyone that condones their actions are also kooks.
BTW, did you know that there were cuniform tablets unearthed that document the fact that when the irrigation canals were built in Sumer 6000 years ago, some of the property owners had their land condemned?