Creating Zoning Problem Solutions

Heck since we are playing devils advocate, how about we tax Alice to build new confinement homes to put all pregnant women. They surely dont know not to smoke, drink, or eat wrong foods. Suppose they get in a car accident or trip and fall down. Some dont want to fork over money to see a doctor. So Big Brother will take care of that. Mandatory pregnancy screenings every month for all females age 12 to age 50. Found pregnant, you go to the govt facility to live in a padded cell, oops... mean guest room, and your behavior and lifestyle is monitored 24/7. Its for the childs own good dont you know. All our lives are intertwined and we cant have individuals doing their own thing that might harm future citizens of the fatherland.... Remember the Fatherland knows whats best for you. Just lie back and think of the Fatherland while the experts have their way....

Or as Alice says:

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"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

I often wonder what the founding fathers would have said about our zoning laws and building codes. I think they would have been a bit hot under their colonial collars.

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Thomas Jefferson had a very distinct fear of the uneducated masses. Gee wasn't he a smart guy.

I agree. They'd be very angry.

When I first bought my land I had no money (it all went into the down payment). I scrounged some materials up and with the help of some friends who had no carpenter experience put up a shack made out of pallets and old sheet metal. It was built for the price of 0 dollars, even the nails were used. It turned out absolutely awful but it worked until I got my free mobile home which was a huge step up. For someone with no money any shelter is better than no shelter.

My shack:



I suppose I could have applied for public housing assistance soaking up taxpayer money but I elected not be "intertwined" with the system. The only intertwining I see going on is with government officials becomming intertwined with my wallet.

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http://www.xanga.com/shackman A blog about whatever

This is a pretty good thread - discusses a lot of the problems.

At times I see both sides of this issue - perhaps a lot of us do.

To somewhat answer the original question, the nearby town has rules you cannot put up a shed on a house lot until there is a house on it - property values (taxes collected), and creating closet businesses, or cluttered lots, etc. I think most of us can see some possible issues there, whether we agree with the thinking of the city or not, we can see the issue?

Anyhow, one creative landowner bought the ajoining property to his house with a decrepit house on it, was basically for the price of the lot.

Got a permit, and built a nice 2.5 stall garage on the property.

_Then_ he raised the old decrepit house.

All perfectly legal, and oked by the zoning & so forth.

He ended up with his second lot with only a nice big garage on it.

He got the opertunity in his case, and watched his p's & q's, to do things in the right order.

If he had leveled the house first, he wouldn't have been able to build the shed.

--->Paul

Another one, couldn't build a structure in a flood plain out on their country property. People wanted a garage & only worked in that floodplain area, so did some research, and could put down paver blocks - not permanant concrete. And could put up a portable prefab 2-stall roof thing - like a garage roof. It's not a permanat building. They could side it with the siding & door kit that is sold for it.

So, they ended up with a garage where they wanted, because all the parts were deemed portable, non-permanent in _that_ county.

Wouldn't work in my county for a couple different wordings of the rules, but it did work in their county.

--->Paul

Along those same lines rambler,
I have a friend that lives on a hill within 2 miles of a creek. The hill he lives on has NEVER flooded in the memorable history of anyone in our community. After Hurricane Rita, they redrew the flood maps and he is now REQUIRED to hold flood insurance for a house that has been there 40+ years. When he bought his flood insurance, he told them he wanted the Noah's Ark protection, because it would be needed if his house ever went under.

Ironicly, a house 3 miles up the road is 20' lower in elevation, but not considered in the floodplain.... It has flooded 2x since being built in the mid 70's.

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Thomas Jefferson had a very distinct fear of the uneducated masses. Gee wasn't he a smart guy.

Wow, PhilJohnson, I LOVE your pallet shack!!! The link wouldn't work on my blackberry but I just saw the image on my laptop!!!!!!

Alice, you misunderstand the whole import of what I was trying to say. Here is the gravamen (is that the word?) MY MOBILE HOME that I live in now is LEGAL. I have an occupancy permit, well, septic, tie-down, decks, underpinning ad nauseum. It was legal and etc for the other old lady (older than me who croaked so I was given her home in order for a "real house" to be built in its place). What I am trying to say is that the same identical home for the same identical dweller (an old lady who is not going to be popping out illegitimate children like link sausages, making meth or whatever) was going to be denied me (a homeless old lady who owned her own land) because it did not have its department of motor vehicles TITLE because the title had been turned in to the dmv whereupon they deleted record of it so duh of course I could not produce a title for my county bureaucrats. When you set a mobile home according to code (as I thought I said) the tongue, axles, wheels and whatever are removed. the home is set on blocks and tied down to code. the other old lady's family did that for her. The nice mobile home mover guy I hired did that for me right where the health department lady dictated.

I am just saying that I had to roll over, play dead, jump through hoops and carry newspapers (well, be a scofflaw) to recreate a reasonable facsimile of all the paperwork which had been relied upon for the first approval because once the approval had been given, the paperwork was tossed or lost!!!! Now, do you really think I should have to do that? Why couldn't the Greene County inspector just give me a certificate saying the home had met all his requirements and been permitted? That simple declaration from a co-bureaucrat ought to be sufficient for the next one. I think. Since the requirements were the same. Now if I took it across a state line or something where the requirements were different -- well, ditzy though I may be, that was not what I was talking about!!!! I was trying to say I was legal -- but only after incredible effort which, frankly, most folks would not have bothered with.

You need to get out more.

Try farming some day. The requirements for livestock are dizzying. My neighbor got a 41 page booklet to fill out to apply for his next 5 year permit. One of the requirements is that he move a tile intake that is near his driveway. Because, it is possible as he hauls livestock out his driveway, possibly one of the critters will poop, and it's possible it may slide out of the trailer. And possibly it will rain very shortly after, and the rain might wash the poop from that one critter off the road, through the road dicth, and then carry it into the county ditch. Now this tile intake is a good 1/2 mile from his barns and critters, it has nothing to do with raising the animals. The above concern is 'for real', and just one example from the 41 page booklet of things he needs to do.

Does this sort of thing apply to only large operations? I have less than 35 head of cattle that I graze most of the year. Most of the time I have 20 or less.

Me, I need to pass the 10 page booklet every 4 years, because a portion of my cattle area is within 300 feet of the county ditch. While 10 months of the year my cattle are grazing pasture or cornstalks, sometimes they spend a few weeks out of blizzards and spring muck season locked up, and for this I need to pass the smaller booklet for as little as 10 head of cattle. It was very, very important I had rain gutters on the barn. My gutters do not lead to anywhere; the rain misses them for the most part & flys over. They are older than me, and drip what rain they do catch down anyhow. No matter. A box could be checked that my barn has rain gutters, and all is well.


Try being an over the road trucker. You can't drive a mile without breaking the rules. Ask any trucker!!! Sheez. Heard tell of one construction company near here, they trave from the south central part of the state to the north eastern part of the state. There is a DOT station in each portion of the state that they often pass through. One requires they chain up their equipment one way; the other station tells them that is all wrong & won't let them go unless they chain up a different way. It got to the point they would stop 1/2 way & rechain, just so as not to have the hassle of DOT picking after them, looking into other things.... And this is all within the same state, supposedly following the same national rules.....

You are _not_ alone if you think you found something odd with the paperwork.

My neighbor got a permit from the state years ago to let his field tile drain into the highway right of way road ditch. Two years ago he wanted to do that again, the state people about came unhinged, you can't do that! No way! Never heard of such a thing! By chance one day he was talking, and someone who knew someone said oh my (family member of some sort) is secritary for the guy in charge of that up in the capitol, just give so-and-so a call.

He did and a week later he had his permit, no problem, normal state deal available to anyone. As long as you call the state people who know about it.....

That's just government - or really big business is the same - got to find the right person, who knows what is going on.

I'm sure if you had found an older person, or the last person who helpd that job, you mighta done just fine as you said. But sthe new fella understood the rules only his way, and so there you are.

I'd think any of us who have done anything with the govt understands it's all about getting little boxes checked. Doesn't need to do or mean or accomplish anything. Just get the box checked.

Normal operating proceedure.

--->Paul

"Alice, your post is a great example of Nanny-State-Mentality. I am glad to see you are playing Devils Advocate! I would LOVE for the powers that be to allow some sort of opt out clause on much of this stuff. Example: You want to build a house w/o codes, permits, etc. THen You can not sell it. Simple, Easy. You want to drive w/o a seat belt. THen if you get in an accident you are responsible for your actions and the government is not required to give aid. Simple, Easy. You want to.... Then, there should be a SIMPLE, Easy fix."

Sounds good, but doesn't play out so smoothly in real life.
In my community, we had a guy that wanted to build a house. But he hauled in a cabin, that is not permitted in this residential area. He was told it wasn't allowed before he bought it and hauled it in. He cried that he needed a place to stay in while he built his house. So, the Zoning Board allowed it, for a year.
His health got bad and he decided he wanted to live closer to a hospital. He sold his property and cabin, no house. New owner likes his cabin. It is a zoning violation. Should the new owner be required to move it? He paid for it. Yet it was agreed, by previous owner, that it was just temporary. So, allowing something just for you, doesn't work and just creates problems later on. So, how do you PREVENT someone from selling their property?

"My personal gripe about zoning codes is they generally make wide swathes of one type of code - such as huge areas of only residential or huge areas of agricultural only. IMHO what we need are mixed use areas so folks can live near where they work. Residential mixed in with light commercial, mixed business use, some agricultural around the edges mixed in with zoning which would allow agricultural processing and selling of ag products. Right now most zoning codes enforce a car centered society. If small villages were allowed by most zoning codes we'd have a chance of building sustainable walkable communities."

Zones are a part of zoning. Mixing property uses often creates conflicts. People that move to the country, into agricultural areas, complain about the smell of the huge swine confinement setup down the road. People that build in an industrial area complain about the noise from a factory. People that live in a quiet residential area are impacted by the construction of a large apartment complex.
I agree with you that huge areas that cause many mile seperation are not good.
In this country thare has for many years the wasteful division of property. Too may 40 acre parcels cut up into 40 equal one acre, or 80 half acre, lots. Too big to keep mowed, too small to farm. There has been a move to divide a 40 acre piece into 40 one eigth acre lots and those 40 owners share the remaining 35 acres of property. I like that idea. Large cities, that have dying areas, are adopting the small complete community concept.
But much of this is the developer's option.
Local corner stores didn't die out because of zoning. They died out because people don't walk to the store. People generally drive 5-10 miles to take kids to school, shop, work, etc. It isn't the best way, but that's what we do.

Laws are funny- I can legally ride a motorcycle here in FL without a helmet, but I have to drive my car with my seatbelt on. Huh?

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"What one generation tolerates, the next generation embraces." -John Wesley

Haypoint's cabin and MushCreek's nohelmet vs seatbelt are interesting examples of what I am trying to talk about here. Some years back, I bought a house in Page Valley which was inspected by various authorities and the bank loaned me money to buy including money to drill a well. After the well was in, I had several teriffic floods of the septic system into my kitchen. The guy who sold me the house told me to rent a pump and just pump the contents outside. "That's what farmers do," he said. Well, being a court reporter at the time who didn't want to be earning my living by typing in ankle deep dooky juice, I found a guy who said he'd help me. He brought in a little backhoe, dug a ditch and laid pipe between my house and the Shenandoah River. Before he covered his trench back, here came the health department guy to test the water from my new well. Uh oh! With no previous warning I was arrested and put in handcuffs and so was the seller of the property, whose lawyer quickly weaseled him off and left me holding the bag. On my lawyer's advice, I abandoned my house (which I was subject to arrest every 24 hours if I stayed there) and went to Texas. The bank repossessed the house and sold it with my illegal septic system as a pre-existing use. Grandfathered. Now, how much sense does that make??? Why would inspectors pass an illegal or worthless system for two separate buyers and why would the bank reload the financing on that house? Well, obviously they wanted their money back but it really gripes me about the arrest and handcuffs (they HURT) but the house was not made to comply with code before being resold.

See, this is one of the things I love about this board. Deep into page two, we get "the rest of the story."

No wonder building codes and regulations drive you crazy!

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Ha ha, Alice, it isn't just the zoning rules it is that they are not lucid and explained in advance, nor are they consistently enforced as to the (presumably good) original INTENT.

If I had thought about it, obviously I would not have wanted my septic system draining into the Shenandoah River! Where I was blindsided was when I complained to the seller after my kitchen had become my drainfield for the third time, he said he'd get the problem fixed. I had no clue permits were required, nor that the fix was being done without a permit and I sure had no inkling that I would be arrested and finger printed and hand cuffed and acquire a criminal record and be subject to arrest every time I went back in my own house!

I was the goose in the krystalnacht in that sorry nazi attack!!! In fact, I lost my job (that I'd had for 20 years) over it. A criminal charge does not enhance one's bosses appreciation of a freelancer! She bailed me out of jail and after I paid her back and the trial was held (I was guilty even though I didn't know what was going on. Ignorance is no excuse) it was bon voyage for me!!!

Ha, early this morning I got the brilliant revelation as to how I can keep my ducks legally right here where I have close access! I will not post it because I know some people from this area read this board but I can do it totally on the up and up and no one can complain!

I share that same mindset.