Comment by pandaman
18 days ago
>What if a neighbor allowed homeless to camp in front of their house?
People keep writing this, obviously, without thinking even for a minute. A neighbor who allowed homeless camp in front of their house would:
1) have to live behind a homeless camp himself
2) be tanking his own house value
3) be open to sanctions from the code as there are way more restrictions on residential property use than there are on commercial.
>When I lived in Houston
Your experience in Houston, where there is no zoning, is not very irrelevant in discussion of zoning, don't you think? Unless you are actually making an example why zoning is important, of course.
It’s the same man.
1) the business owner has to operate a business behind the camp
2) the business owner tanks the value of their own property
3) what code? The building code? If we can apply a “code” to a home, then we can apply it to a business. So if there really is such a disparity where you live, the issue is that disparity in application of building codes, not zoning laws.
Re: Houston, what does zoning have to do with anything? My story could have happened i”anywhere. Zoning doesn’t control whether you are allowed to cover your property with trash. My point is that even in an area with nothing but houses, you can have horrendous neighbors.
>It’s the same man.
Not at all. There are tons of businesses next to homeless camps in every American city, and the value of a business is not in the building but in the location and zoning, the code is the city code attached to zoning, the thing you don't have in Huston. The zoning for a residential and commercial is different thus you cannot apply residential zoning to commercial and vice versa.
I think you’re just confused.
There is no place in the world that is zoned for homeless encampments. Zoning is stuff like residential, commercial, industrial, mixed use, and so on. If you are talking about homeless encampments, it’s not a zoning discussion.
I don’t support homeless encampments. Out here where I live in California they tend to be on public land like parks. But wherever they are, there should be laws, enforcement mechanisms, and social support to deal with them. But none of those things have anything to do with zoning.
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Don't punish/restrict responsible people for a problem caused by an irresponsible person.
Fix the irresponsible behavior directly.
Most residential codes define minimum living standards, and as a result people camping/crashing on a property whose structure they don't live in, is prohibited.
Apparently your zone code needs to be corrected. Small businesses in residential areas need to be held to relevant/responsible residential zone code.
(You are proposing a zoning code fix too, but for reasons I don't understand, seem fixated on eliminating non-offending businesses, instead of directly addressing the problem.)
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