Letters to the Editor

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To disguise a neighbor's less-than-pristine house, she planted a hedge on the other person's land!
  • @foam peanut

    Thank you for the kind words. I'm afraid that whether code gets enforced can be linked to geography, loudness, and influence in some places where I have lived. I'm helping someone with almost exactly the same kind of situation. In gentrifying areas, or where someone with influence (a developer usually, but in this case politically connected busy body neighbors trying to force an elderly woman out of the neighborhood (not a minority) out over class and aesthic reasons). Through their complaints, they have managed to amass thousands in fines over what is essentially faded paint and small maintenence. Dealing with it long distance is a nightmare. Minneapolis evidently will do this to people as well. I read a story in the Trib over a physically disabled woman threatened with escalating fines because the top of her garage was not painted. She rented a crane to get up there, because her neighborhood was transitional, and painters refused to come to it.

    I wish the lady and her protectors well. I have an elderly mother, and at least I have healthy siblings to help me manage her house, etc. It is hard enough to care for elderly parents when there's more than one willing sibling.