At my old house I called them a few times. 6 BBQ grills and an unkempt lawn is terrible for property values and it looks like crap.
At my old house I called them a few times. 6 BBQ grills and an unkempt lawn is terrible for property values and it looks like crap.
oh this thread again
I can't say anything. My back yard is a mess right now, although I've been slowly making progress to clean it up. I really need to poop or get off the pot when it comes to building a shop. Then the crusty Volvo will have a place to live, which will be the main eyesore once the temp garage and old shed have been demolished...
My area is rural and the houses a spread a fair distance apart. When I moved in my property was an overgrown mess. I started cleaning and dug a hole in my woods that I used the dirt to fill a section of my front yard, and dumped all the cut brush into. One old woman who had a problem with me moving in from the city, because that's where crime comes from, started calling the town. I spent two hours with a guy from the town who liked what we were doing with the place and was glad that someone was cleaning up. His parting comments was that the previous owner had our property rezoned when he ran his towing company here so I wasn't bound by the usually noise and time restrictions of a residential property. He thought this would be good for me to know since I worked nights at the time. I did the rest of my digging after work with another neighbor's Bobcat.
Now I have a new neighbor across the road who is complaining that my porch lights stay on all night. It may be time for bigger lights.
Our area has experienced tons of urban sprawl over the last two decades. It used to be mostly just farmers and their families, but then in the 90's when ever a farm would be for sale developers would buy it, sell all the road frontage as building lots, the resell the remainder back to farmers. So what used to be mile long roads with one or two houses were lined with two acre lots with ranch houses. Some of the newcomers would actually call the county whenever a farmer would spread manure on their fields. They didn't think they should have to smell that. I have no fun stories of ironic revenge or anything, because thats just not how its done around here. But how much of a dimwit do you have to be to think that you can move into a new area with no understanding of how things are and expect people to bend to your will.
But seriously, keep your lawns looking decent. No sense in living in a scrap heap.
In reply to Wall-e:
I've always wondered what people are trying to accomplish by doing something like that in your situation.
I can understand people getting annoyed by loud parties on late Tuesday nights, neighbors dealing drugs, and running a DIY coal fired electric in my backyard, but I have to wonder with an occasional item or a situation where you're actively doing improvements what they expect the result to be.
Okay so I have to deal with the town once. Do you think I'm going to pack up and leave because you called code enforcement? No, you're just going to piss me off and I'll make sure that I'm intimately familiar with all of the ordinances and where to find them. That not only makes it harder for you to catch me on something it makes me more aware of everything you're doing and I'm a seriously vindictive bastard who does not know how to let a grudge go.
I occasionally talk with my neighbors if they're out doing something way late at night. Generally, we can agree that yea firing off cannons or doing doughnuts with your straight piped big block swapped truck in the field behind my house at 11pm tends to annoy me. I'm way more ok with it if I'm invited to do it at 3 pm on a Saturday though. This culture of passive aggressive bullE36 M3 has got to go.
As a recent home owner in a town with obscene housing prices and quite a few new subdivisions with HOAs, and a former intern and government employee who wrote nastygrams to residents who didn't follow the property maintenance ordinance, I can certainly understand the dynamic of property values versus personal freedom.
I moved into a neighborhood where nobody gives a damn specifically because I wanted the freedom to wrench on my cars, or have them sit in pieces if need be. Unfortunately, I also bought a house where I can't really leave them sit, I don't have enough room.
This "I refuse to live anywhere that is a subdivision or incorporated ever again."
That being said, Fences make good neighbors.
With me it was not junk in the back yard. When I moved into a house there was nobody around me, I was raising and training animals for the movie industry and had all my permits and was more than legal in doing so. They build a house down the street and I start getting Fish and Game knocking on my door, they couldnt do much since I had my permits but it became such a big issue I packed up my stuff and moved farther out into the canyon.
I always wondered if that brand new 2 million dollar house ever got their cockroach problem under control?
My struggle is that arguments like "having to look at it causes me grief" or "it looks like crap" don't make sense to me. I don't get to impose my personal aesthetic on other people and their yards full of kids toys, so why do some people get to impose and not me?
I drove by the house in question for the original post. The neighbor has a terrace in his yard such that the garage and front door are up a little bit from street level but the second floor of his house walks out to the back yard. He has a shop building on the side of the lot where my coworker lives with doors that open at street level. Between the two buildings is a retaining wall that blocks drive access to the back from the front.
There is a camper, a gooseneck utility trailer full of random junk, and a scissor lift parked nicely in a row in front of the shop, parallel to the road, and the entire lower yard is pretty much gravel. On the side of the shop facing my coworker, up on the upper rear yard, is a small pile of cinder blocks and a pile about the size of a refrigerator of metal bits.
As per ordinance only one trailer is allowed to be parked in the front yard, and construction equipment is not allowed. Normally with no access to the rear he could probably get a variance for the second trailer, but my coworker would fight it. The guy is pretty much out of luck for the scissor lift and piles of stuff.
I suspect after looking at it that what really bugs my coworker is the gravel yard. My coworker stripes his yard and had a well put in just for irrigation, and where his nice lawn borders the neighbor looks pretty bad.
Unfortunately for him, there isn't anything he can do within the ordinances to force the neighbor to plant grass there. I wonder if sometime soon that chunk of hill is going to get seeded with an obnoxious array of wild prairie flowers? Purely for decoration of course, and not because they spread like weeds through a lawn.
oldopelguy wrote: My struggle is that arguments like "having to look at it causes me grief" or "it looks like crap" don't make sense to me. I don't get to impose my personal aesthetic on other people and their yards full of kids toys, so why do some people get to impose and not me?
If people fill their yards with toys and weeds grow up around them you certainly can impose your will on them through code enforcement. That's why those arguments make sense - we as a society have decided in most residential areas to apply a certain standard of appearance. People that want their place to look like crap can do so outside of those areas. If you want to live in a nice area, you have to keep your place nice too.
Yes, "we as a society" have decided that standards must be maintained. Your house must be so big, and be built exactly this way, it needs too look right, your yard has to look right. You have to think right. You have to look right.
This will be a never ending saga, one neighbor will never be 100% happy with the others.
Glad I don't have an HOA and I park my giant red, white and blue truck in my driveway. 
I love this thread every time it pops up.
Basically everything that dculberson said.
I will never live somewhere without an HOA or City Ordinances again. County ordinances here aren't cutting it. I think I'm done stressing over it, and I'll just take the 5 figure loss in property value when I sell and be happy I'm going to GTFO.
I tried to type something smart but I couldn't.
Just glad to know who on here thinks their farts don't smell.
I'm not an American. I find it amusing and ironic that in the Land of the Free there is such a huge industry (HOA's etc) to control what people can and can't do on their personal plot of land.
edwardh80 wrote: I'm not an American. I find it amusing and ironic that in the Land of the Free there is such a huge industry (HOA's etc) to control what people can and can't do on their personal plot of land.
I am an American and I find it just as strange.
I don't confront my neighbors at all. I won't. People can seem awesome but then turn out crazy. I don't want them getting revenge on me when I'm not home, or at the very least, waiting a few minutes I call the fire department when they see the house on fire. But I don't call the police or code inforcement on them either.
Wall-e wrote: Now I have a new neighbor across the road who is complaining that my porch lights stay on all night.
Tell them that's how you're keeping the crime in the City where it belongs.
Wall-e wrote: Now I have a new neighbor across the road who is complaining that my porch lights stay on all night. It may be time for bigger lights.
Tell them you have stock in Con Edison.
Explain the you leave them on so you can increase your dividend payments and build your retirement.
edwardh80 wrote: I'm not an American. I find it amusing and ironic that in the Land of the Free there is such a huge industry (HOA's etc) to control what people can and can't do on their personal plot of land.
Same here. I've often wondered if the Declaration of Independence had actually stuck with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property would we be here today. Happiness? WTF is that supposed to be? 
I'm not a fan of landscaping, and I hate lawns. There is nothing less sensical to me than having one species of plant cover my entire yard----especially here in FL, where grass doesn't grow naturally and you have to water and groom it all the time. I've let my backyard return to nature....and I love it. I now have privacy, a variety of plant life, and I can trim back for whatever space I need. The birds also love it, and my yard is full of songbirds nearly year round.
Whenever anyone gives me flack I tell them "Talk to the man upstairs.....he designed it. I'm not so arrogant to think I can improve on the good Lord's work" Fortunately I don't have HOA's and where I live is pretty permissible. I keep the front lawn mowed and in decent shape to keep "the man" at bay.....but it's against my will.
One species (lawns) are bad for the soil, bad for water conservation, and just plain dumb in areas where grass doesn't grow naturally. When I fly over AZ and see hundreds of acres of brown.... and then little patches of green squares, it's silly. Why waste all the water and resources to force mother nature to do something it's not supposed to do? Fill your yard with cactus and rocks for pete's sake, or better yet....pave it to make more room for derelict cars! 
My neighbors just take their crap and pile it in all the other neighbors yards. I could write a book. They keep their yard pretty well, but randomly they leave a trailer or boat in someone else's driveway. I came home one night to find a boat in mine. I pad locked it and chained to my house, it's never happened to me again. I can't help their problem of three teenage drivers all with their own cars, two trailers and two boats. And every time I put a brush pile in front of my house, they add at least that much to it. Oh, and have I mentioned this guy is a preacher?
And then there's the time I caught them jumping my fence to get into the pool. The dad actually said to me that if he knew I was going to be at home, he wouldn't have done it. 
In reply to racerdave600:
Holy crap! (pun intended) That's some seriously E36 M3ty neighbors. Doing god's work I guess?
spitfirebill wrote:edwardh80 wrote: I'm not an American. I find it amusing and ironic that in the Land of the Free there is such a huge industry (HOA's etc) to control what people can and can't do on their personal plot of land.I am an American and I find it just as strange.
I think it's because as Americans are slowly becoming more greedy and getting paid less, with less financial stability and less trust in retirement accounts, we've also become more focused on what our property is worth and the effect that inconsiderate neighbors might have on that property. People use property as nest eggs, and as such want to maintain and protect that investment.
Housing is expensive to own and not everyone can afford to own their private 10 acres, so when you're forced to live amongst the plebs, you also still harbor that urge to protect that investment.
Unlike cars, we can't just sue or use insurance as a way of claiming damage to the value of our investment. I can't sue my neighbors for being slobs if they ruin my investment.
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