Creating Zoning Problem Solutions

[Navotifarm]

I'm guessing that a major reason that us homesteaders want to live on our own land. Is simply to do whatever we want to without restrictions but as I learned as a new would-be homesteader, little creatures in windowless rooms work tirelessly to make rule books to squeeze us renegades into conformity with lockstep conformity that often makes no sense at all. It sometimes seems to me that it is my actual DUTY to thwart some bureaucratic rules just for the unknown next generation.
I bet folks on here have some great war stories as to how they scurried safely out from under the heavy thump of local officials so here's one of my. Stories in hopes it will help some who will be faced with the same/similar situation.
Basically, this is the concept of the sop to cerebus - give them something so they let you pass
I went through all kinds of hell with the health department, zoning and building people. Nowadays you can probably look up all the laws and regulations via internet so you are forewarned but way back in 2004 all my contacts were face to face involving many unpleasant surprise requirement involving many hoops I had to go through. They blackmail you, you cannot have electricity unless you do x, y and z.
I was GIVEN a really nice 14x50 mobile home. A little old lady had it. The wheels had been removed and the title turned in to dmv in Greene County. I got it moved (secretly without permits) to my land in Orange county and oh boy! I had to really be creative! There were a whole bunch of requirements including I had to have a copy of the title which didn't exist any more, (I managed to get an official letter from the tax assessor in Greene covering the situation because dmv had no records plus a got a note with a dmv stamp on it specifically they had no record, a copy of the floor plan (I forged one by copying a similar one a nice mobile home salesman found from in a book of discontinued models and rexeroxed the page blanking out some of the words) and official installation book (which I borrowed from a mobile home sales office) and well and septic which were big dramas. The electricity came over another parcel and a nice guy from the electric co helped me do a forgery false statement to deal with that! Boy, I had to become a hardened criminal with forgery, perjury, false documents just to get legal permission to live on my own land in my own thepriceisright home!
So the lesson I learned is, for every specific rule or law, there is probably a loophole and if you can create a convincing document, you can use it as a magic carpet to sail through the hole if you do not get the bureaucrat in a corner and get his/her back up!
If I had not gone through all that hassle, I would have been prevented from living in my own nice home on my own beautiful land. Worse, if I had bought that mobile home NEW on a lot and had the folks there step through that whole permit process, it would (with interest) have cost me $78,000!) So I guess this could be called high-class dumpster diving!

[Wilhelm]

Isn't it amazing how they just fold their tent and go away when presented with "official" documents.

I'm sure a nice fat envelope full of cash would do the same thing, but that option doesn't exist for most of us. I have nothing but contempt for these pencil pushers, and love it when someone beats them at their own game.

I learned a long time ago, that property ownership and all the little hoops that go with it are meant to keep poor people paying rent to certain groups, not living on their own land.

Paying your rent becomes your main job, and that is just the way they like it.

[hippygirl]

Originally Posted by Wilhelm

Isn't it amazing how they just fold their tent and go away when presented with "official" documents.

I'm sure a nice fat envelope full of cash would do the same thing, but that option doesn't exist for most of us. I have nothing but contempt for these pencil pushers, and love it when someone beats them at their own game.

I learned a long time ago, that property ownership and all the little hoops that go with it are meant to keep poor people paying rent to certain groups, not living on their own land.

Paying your rent becomes your main job, and that is just the way they like it.

You know, I was reading something along these lines a while back...something to do with maintaining "classes" in society.

Gonna go surfing to see if I can find it again...

[Terri]

My Father is an engineer, and he believes in doing things by the book. If you are creative, this can be done.

My folks raised 6 kids in their home, and then we moved out. But, my sisters marriage broke up and she was pregnant so she came back home for a while. There was DEFINATELY room!

My folks decided to turn the old family room into a living room with kitchionette for her and her child. This is legal as she is a relative. Since there is a back bedroom and a half bath she would have, basically, a 2 room apartment. And, because there IS that half bath, the pipes were just behind a wall so the water was there for the kitchionette. Remodeling would be a SNAP!

The PROBLEM, when he applied for a permit, was that we were zoned for single family homes and a separate kitchen is not allowed in a single-family home in San Jose. Dad went home and thought about it a while.

He came back and, instead of handing them forms for a building permit for a second kitchen he asked for a WET BAR!!!!!! That would give him the sink and the refridgerator and the counters and the cupboards.

They approved it, congratulated him, and wished him well on his upgrade for his home.

And, once the upgrade was finished, he bought a dishwasher, pushed it under the counter, and plugged it in.

IT WAS THE SAME DESIGN! The only difference was in what he called it and that he used a portable diswasher!

[whatrset]

I knew a lady with the XYZ issue of getting electricity. She got a cousin w/an RV to to come in, She already had a pole up. When the inspectors came they said the 200 amp service was a bit overkill for the RV, but since it had it's own toilet facilities, that it did not have to meet that part of the requirement for hook up. The electricity was turned on, wire run to the house, and a gravel RV pad was left as a nice parking space.

[haypoint]

You can look at zoning or health regulations any way you want. I have a big investment in my property. Its value depends on a safe well kept community. The community at large accepted those zoning regulations as a way to control growth and limit development that would diminish our community.
I'll give an example. This area was plagued by a lot of tarpaper shacks. The community wanted to limit more of that and promote family homes. So, there is a minimum square footage for a house. I think it is 700. So, some folks have seen a loop hole and are building garages. Then after the inspections are done, they use them as cabins. After a few years, they lose interest and they become simular to tarpaper shacks.

It seems you think that regulations come out of evil government officials. It really comes from a community that is trying to preserve what they have.

Most communities don't have the money to fight with you about your violations, so the zoning administrator knows he can't fight you except on a great big violation. Your bogus documents is all he needs to get off the hook. When this comes back to bite someone, it won't be him, he approved it based on your fictious paperwork.

But, if you were my neighbor and were cutting corners with well or septic regulations, I'd be on the Health Department like white on rice. If older trailers were not allowed there and you couldn't verify a manufacture date, you'd be out of there. Just that simple.

Bottom line, check your zoning before you buy.

[Navotifarm]

Haypoint, when I bought my land, it was all wooded. Prior to the Depression, it was farmland but during the Depression, folks left to find work wherever they could, shipyards, railroad, steelwork. The land lay essentially abandoned for years, hence the trees.
Suddenly since around 2,000, there's a flood of out-of-staters (mostly New Yorkers) who have swarmed in on local land like the raccoons hit my chickens this spring. First it was a 300-acre Loblolly plantation covered with lockstep New York McMansions. A road which people rode bicycles and horses and walked on was suddenly terribly dangerous because all those $250,000 homes had two working parents and teen-agers with at least 3 vehicles per house so they could make the $ to pay for these enormous energy-guzzling homes.
I was given a really nice (for me) mobile home that was safe and more than adequate for my frugal needs. I have 70 acres here. My home is more than a third of a mile in any direction from any other homes and completely invisible (remember the trees?) Except to trespassers. It had been permitted, accepted and approved in one county. Why not just be able to transfer the paperwork?
You want to keep the monetary value of your property up. I want to live in peace on my homestead with the wildlife that were ejected by the mcmansions. Zoning shouldn't be the same for the independent people as it is for the homogenized ones. And if you'd seen all the rooves that caved in around here from our winter snowload or knew 45,000 people lost electricity in Charlottesville from a short, swift storm, maybe you would view some of the zoning and building codes as not quite so perfect or valid, after all.
If I had just given up to the letter of the law, I would have been homeless, thanks to people who would have had me "out of there" because some arbitrary DATE number didn't meet code? Fortunately, the date was okay and a nice home and a grateful lady were "allowed" even though the home would be under your idea of minimum square footage. But if I had as much square footage as you do, probably I'd be raising tilapia, earthwroms, mushrooms and using it for purposes other than keeping the $ value of my land up .....

[haypoint]

As you have come to understand, permitted, accepted and approved in one area doesn’t mean anything to a new location with other requirements.
If you feel the zoning and building codes are not perfect, we are in agreement, nothing is perfect.
The date on the manufacture of your mobile home isn’t some arbitrary number. Mobile Home Manufactures have rules and minimum standards, too. For awhile it was just fine to use aluminum wiring. But when they were found to be the cause of many mobile home fires, the requirement changed back to copper. In, I think, 1972 Mobile Homes had to be built to the new code. In our community, your mobile home must comply with that code. If it doesn’t have that plaque on the side of the trailer, or is older, it must comply with the current HUD standards. That’s hard to do.
It isn’t “my idea”. It is a community established standard.
Sorry to hear that your community got taken over by residential development. Perhaps if you had worked with the zoning board to create a zoning ordinance that limited land splits or other ways to preserve your community, your slice of heaven could have been preserved. I did.

[Danaus29]

How about the powers that be changing the rules mid-game. Our central sewer system is a prime example. When several homes were built they were required to have aerators, the aerator discharge was required to be dumped into the storm drains. About 15 years back our neighborhood asked for storm drains but since we had several homes discharging effluent into the drains the single septic systems were ruled to be in violation of oxygen content levels (and then only because a freak storm flooded many aerators which were set up so storm run-off would flow into them and a bunch more were under water). So we got stuck with the cost of installing sewer service and still have no storm drains. At the time the system was built we were told it was just big enough for our neighborhood, fast forward 10 years and a nearby rich community needs sewer service. For $5000 per home they could have their own brand new rebuilt state of the art sewer system. So what happens? The rich people are determined to be in need of federal assistance and they pay NOTHING for their tie in to our sewer system, which each home in our neighborhood had to pay for.

[Navotifarm]

Haypoint, my mobile home had the HUD number, fortunately. It was only moved a few miles and less than a mile over a different county line. I don't express myself very well, apparently. Another way to say this is that the home met all my county's requirements in the other county but once complied with, the title and other records were disposed of. How smart did any official have to be to recognize this? As it was, I had to go to a huge amount of hassle, work and ingenuity to "create" (or to use another term, "forge") a replacement set of documents. Except, of course, for the title.
It's great you worked with your zoning people to get what you want. Interestingly, when I bought my land, I had the right to subdivide into four parcels every four years. I planed to have little homesteads to support myself in my declining years. Now developers are building over 1,000 MORE homes around me, my right to subdivide has been taken away. AND my taxes raised to pay for all the new requirements of the urbanites. You are far far away from where I am. I am in the path of an avalanche of government workers being sent down here from Washington, DC to disperse them owing to the 911 attacks. Today I learned that all the Canadian geese which had settled into the area causing no harm (except goose dooky on the swimming beaches)had been rounded up and shipped off to slaughter as a knee jerk reaction to the Hudson River airplane incident.
There is an element of lunacy with relationships these days which affects cause and effect. I was originally saying that for me to be "allowed" to live in my simple livable code compliant home, I was obliged to forge and create documents to replace documents that had a paper trail. To me, there's something wrong with a system that would deny a citizen the right to live in her own (habitable by code standards) home on her own land unless she became a criminal (granted I'm overstating) to do so. I'm also saying that for others faced with the same by-the-book code enforcers, there are ways to get what you want by giving them what some rule-creator employs them to "want."
Oh, it's the Fourth of July! Hooray for freedom, forged or friendly!

[haypoint]

The zoning ordinances for my Township are vastly different from adjoining townships. Yes, a trailer that meets the requirements there may not meet the requirements of another area.

Interesting that you want to be able to break up your property but dislike it that someone else did it, creating the population expansion you hate.

If your taxes have gone up because of the local development, I think you’ll note that those McMansions have played a big part in the increase in the value of your property and it is your land’s increased value that has driven your taxes up. Could have been the voters, but I’m guessing increased valuation.

You sort of lost me with, “You are far far away from where I am. I am in the path of an avalanche of government workers being sent down here from Washington, DC to disperse them owing to the 911 attacks. Today I learned that all the Canadian geese which had settled into the area causing no harm (except goose dooky on the swimming beaches)had been rounded up and shipped off to slaughter as a knee jerk reaction to the Hudson River airplane incident.
There is an element of lunacy with relationships these days which affects cause and effect.”

I’ll chalk it up to being late. I wouldn’t ask you to explain all that, but I’ll pick something easy. Please provide news reports of the Goose roundup and goose slaughter plant. We can discuss the avalanche of government workers and what causes cause and effect another time.

[Lyra]

Originally Posted by haypoint

You can look at zoning or health regulations any way you want. I have a big investment in my property. Its value depends on a safe well kept community.

Agreed. I also believe that regulations are needed. You have communities in this country that are still dumping their sewer into watersheds.

[MushCreek]

I agree- zoning rules and building codes can protect your property value, and there should be places where you can live and have that protection. But there should also be places for those of us who want to do whatever we please with our property, so long as it isn't illegal or damaging to the environment.

I had a hard time finding such property in rural SC, of all places. Some lots required a minimum 2400 sq ft house! That doesn't seem very environmentally responsible to me, since I have no need of a house more than 1/2 that size. The recent tiny house movement is running up against brick walls everywhere, because most places won't allow them, and once you add in standard building codes, it is virtually impossible.

We managed to buy 7 acres without zoning. It is still subject to the state-wide building code, IBC 2006, currently. Even that dictates how tall your grass can be, and what you can park on your property. We bought the land knowing full well that the freedoms we will enjoy, our neighbors can also, and that we may be inconvenienced by that. We accept what we signed up for, just as someone buying into a fancy gated community has to accept what they signed up for. I just fear that places like ours may someday disappear altogether.

There are a number of ways to cheat the system, and people will, given no other choice. In many places, you can build a shed up to a certain size without a permit. So guess what? People are building sheds and using them as cabins. A certain number of them will fall into disrepair, and sooner or later, the practice will be banned by yet another rule. Many people also cheat by enlarging or modifying their homes without a permit. Such work is often sub par, and pity the next person who lives in that house! You can get slapped with a hefty fine for building without a permit, AND made to tear it down in some cases. Also, the insurance companies are getting into the act, denying coverage when they find out the house was modified without a permit. Life used to be so much simpler.....

[ErinP]

I think it's much easier just to live in places where there is no zoning... Or if there is, it's really minimal.
There are still plenty of places like that, people just don't want to live here.

[whatrset]

We have more housing codes after hurricane Rita than we did before. Really irritates me that people want to dictate to me how to do stuff on MY property. I live in a very rural area, and until 2005, you did not need a building permit in my parish. After the Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, they changed that statewide. Good thing my parish doesnt require permits for additions or cabins. THey have gone crazy. And yes, I fall in the I own I make the rules crowd. I could give a rats tail about the property values of my neighbors.

[haypoint]

It is common to look at one's property or one self as disconnected from the rest of the world. Sounds like AFTER your disaster the State took steps to lessen the damage in the event of another Katrina.
I seem to recall quite a number of folks that got new homes because theirs didn't stand up to the type of weather that visits your region.
Perhaps to make it fair, those that don't want to abide by the new rules can simply mark their home, " Not up to code, refuse disaster relief." That way the rest of the country isn't paying for your short-sightedness?
Sad to see your interest in your neighbor's investment in their home is exceeded by a rat's tail. Total lack of community spirit displayed.

[KeithBC]

One of the reasons I live where I do is because I like the zoning regulations. My neighbours can't subdivide their property into postage stamp lots, they can't build 5000 square foot McMansions, they can't build a Walmart next door. Those are all good things, and I happily waive my right to do those things myself in order to live in that kind of community.

[Alice In TX/MO]

I find it a bit disconcerting that one of our homesteaders chose to come on the board and boast about being a scofflaw.

[whatrset]

Originally Posted by haypoint

It is common to look at one's property or one self as disconnected from the rest of the world. Sounds like AFTER your disaster the State took steps to lessen the damage in the event of another Katrina.
I seem to recall quite a number of folks that got new homes because theirs didn't stand up to the type of weather that visits your region.
Perhaps to make it fair, those that don't want to abide by the new rules can simply mark their home, " Not up to code, refuse disaster relief." That way the rest of the country isn't paying for your short-sightedness?
Sad to see your interest in your neighbor's investment in their home is exceeded by a rat's tail. Total lack of community spirit displayed.

Actually, my neighbor can do as he wishes with his home. It is HIS HOME. I actually would prefer to have my property undervalued as it lessens any tax burden that I could face for being a property owner. As for the "not up to code, I refuse disaster relief." I saw no disaster relief. I dealt with the situation, the government does not owe me anything. Many of the rules that local areas implemented made no sense and only served to move money from the poor to the rich. Before the storms, you could build a house, and be up to code and the permits were a $50 formality. Now they are a $5k necessity. Now, if you wanted to say as a government "This house may not to be sold b/c it does not conform to XYZ code 2010, I'm ok with that as long as no homes get grandfathered in due to being older or whatever. This country was founded on freethinking ideals, and these ideals have been undercut by insurence companies, banks, and legislation that reduces your control over your own property!

[whatrset]

Total lack of community spirit displayed.

Actually, the community that I live in is rather freespirited and many believe as I do about what influence should be allowed in regards to one's own properties. It is one reason why many people migrate into our rural area from more populated areas nearby. Unfortunately, about half of those who come to the country for it's charm, bring their suburbanite ideas with them.