It's almost that bad here

The community that I live in has a stack of special bylaws. I won't go into them all, but they range from how much of your front lawn has to be grass, to limiting the amount of habitable VOLUME, not foot print or height, your house can be based on your lot size. What brought them all about was the fact that it's easily one of the nicest communities in this city, but also happens to be right next to a university which was founded 3 years after the community (1911 for the community). So in classic by an expensive house next to a pig farm and then try and shut said farm down fashion, we have two militant community groups. The first is the biggest and mildly militant, the second which I call the Gestapo, does everything from hide in bushes with cameras, to trespassing on property (this has happened to me) in order to snoop and photograph.

I had heard stories and rumors etc about this before I bought a house here, but hadn't really understood. The first week I moved in, other than just randomly being accosted (anything from old ladies yelling at me and refusing to listen to anything I said, to neighbours asking way too many questions), I had a visit from a bylaw enforcement officer because I had wheeled a fridge that was left here with a large for sale $50 sign on three sides.

And so it starts.. I could type for hours, but won't unless people want to hear more, like how they are now actively trying to bankrupt all the landlords in the area. Luckily they're not going to succeed with me, but it's only a matter of months before foreclosure and for sale signs pop up all over the neighbourhood.

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Andrew M
Onterrible
30ish

yadada

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Andrew M
Onterrible
30ish

That's what you get for living in the Hammer?

nmi

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Andrew M
Onterrible
30ish

hudson Wrote:
> does everything from hide in bushes with cameras,
> to trespassing on property (this has happened to
> me) in order to snoop and photograph.

This is why God invented baseball bats.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

Actually, its why he invented non-toxic bird shot.



Pete Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> hudson Wrote:
> > does everything from hide in bushes with
> cameras,
> > to trespassing on property (this has happened
> to
> > me) in order to snoop and photograph.
>
> This is why God invented baseball bats.
>
>
>
> Pete Remner
> Cleveland, Ohio
>
> 1984 RX-7 reshell
> 1978

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Kirk Coughlin
Woodbury, MN and River Falls, WI

Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.

Pete Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> This is why God invented baseball bats.

I wasn't there, but one day my girlfriend goes out the front door to go on the morning dog walk and there are two men with cameras on my property.. AND they then start drilling her with questions.. OY

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Andrew M
Onterrible
30ish

I'm no American which I guess is why I'm missing the point here - what are they trying to accomplish in general?

Not that we don't have that sort of behaviour here in Denmark, but normally that has to do with some smucks that gets pissed of about your hedge not being cut in time, a little too much noise at nights from the garage (which apparently is not okay - but throwing a party outside 'till 4 in the morning is just dandy), someone putting a trailer in the wrong spot or some other stupid little thing.

But to me it doesn't sound like what you're experiencing - educate me please :-).

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Brgrds
Brian

wildert Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm no American which I guess is why I'm missing
> the point here - what are they trying to
> accomplish in general?
>
> But to me it doesn't sound like what you're
> experiencing - educate me please :-).

I didn't want to write much, since I could feel myself getting a wee bit ragey while typing the first post. A quick re-cap: I'm Canadian, my neighbour isn't just being a dick, he's trying to bankrupt me.

Abstract:

The initial "problem" is that the neighbourhood is right next to a University, which of course has students. After a while people started buying houses and stuffing students into every possible room and didn't do things like invest in proper timely yard maintenance. (this is of no interest to you, but one of the many curses of Hamilton has been the landlord from another city).

Yadayadayada

Family type residents try and force landlords into bankruptcy.

But what these residents haven't seemed to have figured out is that their property value is currently exceeding the amount of money that could be made from renting out the house (trust me I know) and most of the upward price pressure is from people getting into the landlord game. So by actively trying to force me and other landlords into bankruptcy, they are more than likely going to fuck themselves out of a lot of money. I don't have a crystal ball, but soon I will have 2 useless degrees

Back-story:

So when faced with a problem/annoyance, initially the community does what any other community does and that's make bylaws! These particular bylaws exceed those of any other community I know of besides places like gated communities (funnily enough this was supposed to be one way back just after the turn of the 20th century).

I don't know the entire back-story, so I will skip forward a bit. Currently there are many residents that are extremely acrimonious to anything that resembles a student or landlord. They've managed to force the university to add around 5,000 beds (a really big number since enrollment is only ~20,000 full time students and there was already a glut of beds) in the last year. Which they proudly proclaim is a deliberate attempt to force as many landlords as possible to sell, because they want students out of their community.

My Story:

I've been here for 3 years now and when I bought this house from a family (good) and I'm a landlord (bad). SO when I bought the house there was water leaking down to the first floor (I fixed it), the front door was both falling off it's hinges and the mechanics were fucked (fixed it), there were baby trees growing in the eves troughs (cleaned them), it had large trees growing RIGHT NEXT to the foundation in countless places that were damaging the side of the house and rotting the roof (cut them down), the lawn that was always dead (now mostly alive), it had a rotten leaky basement (now mostly fixed) and so on. Oh I should add that we're quiet.

Now back to the bylaws, they've got everything locked down so tightly you likely can't add an inch to your house without a variation which gets mailed out to all your neighbours. This is so they can deny any permits to landlords and allow them for families. Makes sense right? So if I was a family I could make a full 3 story, ie. full basement, first and second floor, addition (there have/are at least 5 major additions being done by families in no more than 20 houses in either direction of me).

So, I had a 78"/~198cm ceiling height in my basement and I wanted to make as much of it as possible 8'/~244cm so it doesn't feel like a dungeon (the whole thing was leaky and rotten anyways), so I can live in it. Well you wouldn't believe the shit I get from some people about this MAJOR addition.. "we have no problem with you, but the community is concerned that you will sell your house and it will become a big student house". What they don't say of course is that they have no problem with 3 story additions as long as they are currently owned by families, because they won't ever sell!

Anyways, I only get treated like a red-headed step child by a few people now. It will be really interesting to see how these latest events play out. I'm fairly convinced that it will be the pin that pricks the price bubble here, which since I'm not planning on selling, isn't such a terrible thing (hey maybe my taxes will go down hhaha). Eh, well I'm done venting now.. no need to talk about the trespassers with cameras who when discovered decided to drill my girlfriend with questions.

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Andrew M
Onterrible
30ish



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2007 02:07AM by hudson.

Your neighborhood needs a housefire or two that happen to break out in certain troublemakers' houses.

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JohnLane

Overkill is consistently more fun