Comment by pandaman
18 days ago
I lived next to a mom and pop store, not grocery, selling crystals and such. The owner of the store allowed a homeless camp on the store's lot. City could not clean it out because it's on a private property. The closest tent was less than 50' from my bedroom. The homeless fought, burned stuff, blasted music and hopped over 8' fence into my backyard to help themselves with anything they found there. Store owner was not bothered perhaps because during the day the homeless wondered off, perhaps he just liked them. The police did not do anything, would not even come over noise complaints. Would you like to live like this?
Could you clarify why it is important to your point that the neglectful property owners next door, owned a store rather than a house or vacant lot?
It was not neglected, it was an functioning store. I doubt someone would do the same with their house, an empty lot is also a concern.
Why do you doubt it? Sounds like the owner didn't care. If it was a house, what would be different?
2 replies →
Ah, but my old landlord did exactly this, with the back yard of his home and the lot behind it, which once upon a time held his first home. Until the city tore it down for neglect, at which point it became a vacant lot - that he still owned. Largely with the assistance of his unofficial husband, who’d moved into the backyard, partly due to them no longer getting along so well, and partly due to the house becoming overrun with their hoarder tendencies.
Said unofficial husband was dealing drugs out of the backyard, and, as time passed, the backyard, followed by the vacant lot behind - for some unknown reason referred to as “the sand lot” became home to numerous homeless junkies. It became a rodent infested, trash filled, needle strewn nightmare, abhorred by the neighborhood.
The landlord, bless his heart, was, once upon a time, a sweet, naive, hippy, and very talented artisan. Until “someone” introduced him to meth, and it all went downhill from there. He remained a kind soul - and unable to say no to anyone, even when he could no longer stand the situation himself, and knew he was close to losing his remaining house.
Well, actually, he’d started trying to by the end, with our help; we were happy to play the role of “the bad guys” so he didn’t have to. But it was too late, someone gave him a hotshot (meth and heroin) and that was the end of all that.
(Who were/are we? My partner and I rented the other half of his house in March 2020. It was rundown, but cheap, and we were still getting back on our feet after my partner spent several months in the hospital with bacterial pneumonia and we ended up quasi-homeless. We knew the landlord and his unofficial husband from many many years earlier, long before all the nonsense began, and were in a hurry to find a new place so we did not do our due diligence. Didn’t take long to figure out the hell we’d landed in, but thanks to that little pandemic that started around the same time, it became impossible to move.)
So, yes, people have done that with their house.
The fact that the problem happened at a store, didn't make the store itself the problem.
Any more than the problem of loud neighbors, is a problem of having neighbors.
It's a problem of people owning non-residential property next to residential. I am against that, not just stores but the comment I responded to asked about stores specifically.
I live next door to some drunks who party all night. If that house were a store it would be locked up and empty after 10pm. This is a problem of people owning residential property next to residential.
Seems like this is just an extension of any other dispute, and failure to resolve conflict between neighbors, perhaps due to lack of community cohesion between the store owner and yourself or others. This is the nature of living, and if there are problems, we should have ways to resolve it without crazy blanket rules like no commercial next to residential. The failure is in the reasons become homeless and in responding to people who actively disrupt the peace and intrude, not the existence of a store.
It's not just that it's not a fundamental characteristic of stores, but it's also not a fundamental characteristic of homeless people, it's just a characteristic of these homeless people and this store. Depending on the type of store, I'd grant you that other issues could have arisen, such as rodents, smells, etc.. but also any other neighbor could be hosting parties, smoking near your window, leaving debris around. In some cases, you either need to accept it, adapt, or find somewhere else to live.
I had a neighbor in the burbs growing up that didn't like the way we behaved on our property, or how it looked, and stuck her nose in and intruded frequently, often threatening to call the police for all sorts of absurd reasons.
What if a neighbor allowed homeless to camp in front of their house?
Seems like the issue is the store owner (i.e. the neighbor), not the fact that it is a store.
When I lived in Houston I used to jog past a house where the front yard was absolutely covered in garbage. Super nice neighborhood and all the houses in the neighborhood looked great, but just this one guy clearly had issues. It smelled horrendous.
Anyway, seems unrelated to it being a store.
13 replies →
If a house near you were abandoned, could you do something about it?
3 replies →
I mean yea, youre a nimby then.
I am against your views because it increases the price of living for everyone, for your own specific benefit.
8 replies →
It's unfortunate that you have had that terrible experience and that the legal system in your location failed you.
I'm not sure however that there's anything to indicate that mom and pop stores are especially susceptible to these kinds of outcomes. It sounds more like you got a case of shitty neighbour which is possible whether or not the neighbour is a commercial lot or a small home.
If your negative experience had been with a neighbour living in a private home instead of a neighbour who owned a small business would that change your view around the matter of zoning for small businesses in residential neighbourhoods?
I don’t think it’s a common pattern for mom and pop stores to have a homeless camp on their lot.
Neither do I, yet it's a much higher probability with a commercial property vs residential.
The probability is exactly 0% if the city doesn't allow it. This has nothing to do with zoning. If it was a house next door allowing a homeless encampment would you conclude that having houses next to other houses should be disallowed?
3 replies →
This seems like a wildly specifically bad outcome.. I’m a bit confused why your city allows this? You can call the cops on owners for noise violations, unsafe conditions, etc, etc.
Having lived in a dense walkable place with plentiful stores mingled with residential housing, I can say I’ve never seen that particular problem before.
You are not from the US, are you? The government of big cities here is taken over by people who believe the society we have is to be dismantled.
I live in a big city and have not had this experience whatsoever. The most damaging policies I’ve encountered are a direct byproduct of NIMBYism
What you don't seem to see is that the problem is not the fact that the shop owner let the homeless people stay there.
The problem is the fact that those people were homeless to begin with.
So many people like you seem to just accept the idea that there will always be homeless people—you just don't want to have to see them. Ideally, they should just go die, and decrease the surplus population, right? At least that way they won't be bothering you.
If a few of them are breaking noise ordinances or stealing stuff and the police won't do anything, then complain to the city about that, not about the fact that the shop owner has the compassion to allow them a place to exist.
And if you actually want there to be fewer homeless people overall......then maybe, just maybe, you might have to accept fewer zoning regulations that raise the price of housing.
Why would you think that I don't see that the homeless are a problem? They are a huge problem and I don't really care what happens to them just as they don't care what happens to me but yes, they should not be allowed to camp on the streets in my city.
Where do you think they should go, then?
Are you willing to see the city pay to house them?
Because otherwise, you're basically saying "I don't think the fact that they're homeless is a problem; I think the fact that I have to see them be homeless is a problem."
3 replies →
The city should have gone after the property owner, they are responsible for any encampments on their property, and nuisance is definitely included in that, even here in liberal Seattle, and let’s not get into liability (your fire insurance has to cover them, so your insurance company gets involved and jacks your rates up really high). So in Seattle if they setup on private property, the property owner is in big trouble, so they mostly setup on public land.
You realize homes are also private property right? You can have a shitty neighbor like the one described that is also enabled by the fact that they're in their own home. That doesn't justify what they're doing, but your argument against stores as "private property" doesn't hold water.
I could, but most people, even the ones who advocate for "homeless rights" don't want to live in a homeless camp. They are fine with letting others though.
I would not like to live like this. I don't believe that relaxed zoning laws would make a situation like this more likely.
That sounds awful. Did you take them to civil court or explore doing so?
I did explore it, but there is not much to do without police reports. I had only reports for theft but those were not investigated, could not get noise reports as the cops would not come or come during daytime when the homeless went off the camp.
The trick is to report them as being illegal landlords ;)
Only half-joking.
1 reply →
Did you talk to the store owner about the problem?