Woman Goes to Jail for Not Mowing Lawn

[smitbret]

Yet its not your business whether I mow my lawn or not. Your version of a "responsible house owner" does not give you permission to extort your neighbors.


And yes the same applies with taxes. Seems that you understand the concept just fine but have dismissed the moral aspect just so your neighbors will have mowed lawns....smh

EDIT: and what makes it okay for the State to do, but not you or me? Whats the difference?

EDIT2: I don't expect you to answer the above question as that is a tough one to confront. Well it was for me anyways.

So you won't mind if I casually brew small batched of meth in the basement next to your home........ it's really none of your business.

 

[TechBoyJK]

You're vastly over estimating people's desire to repeal every single rule they come across, and I don't know why you're equating someone who is willing to mow their own lawn to someone who actively supports the enforcement of the rule.

And I don't know what you mean by "people like me" either as I was doing gardening at the weekend - just because I do it myself, doesn't mean I demand the same of others. These rules were insisted upon because far too many people are nosey busy bodies.

There's a very legitimate reason for proper lawn care.

It's shameful to leave your lawn in bad shape. It's shameful to not wipe your ass after pooping. It's shameful to not brush your teeth on a regular basis. There's a reason why these things are shameful.

An uncontrolled lawn can cause major problems for a neighborhood. Until you have your own lawn to keep care of, and have to face the consequences of failing to keep up on your lawn, you might not understand.

 

[Darwin333]

It is your neighbor's duty not to live like a hillbilly and to have respect for his/her neighbors. As has been pointed out, there are many other reasons why these rules exist. The town doesn't generally give a crap about your sale price; they have other concerns.

Most towns tax your property based upon its value, they very much do care.

Furthermore, in areas with ordinances or by-laws, there are consequences to living like a slob. Don't like it? Move where no such rules exist. These ordinances or by-laws are known when you buy a house and aren't hidden.

Lol, you say that but it isn't exactly true. I'd bet that not a single one of you knows every ordinance that you are expected to abide by and I'd go even further that half of you either have broken or are breaking some obscure ordinance. I had a friend who had a retired asshole living on his block that had nothing better to do than go around and be an asshole with said obscure laws. One poor guy had to spend $500 because the gate to his fence was 2" too small per local ordinance. Funny thing was, he didn't have the gate built, it was there when he bought it 5 years prior.

You give me a couple of hours and I bet money I can find more than one thing that you currently are not in compliance with. Who cares if it isn't bothering anyone, rules are rules right?

Like many rules or laws which exist in society, there wouldn't even be a need for such rules if people behaved like adults, had respect for others, and took care of their properties. If you can't mow your lawn once a week or paint your home's trim once every few years, you shouldn't be buying a home.

There is no ordinance in my area about painting my homes trim and even better I can paint it any color I so choose. Since I don't plan on selling it and because I own a large construction company I can actually get it painted and shingled below the cost of materials (the manufacturers will actually give me the materials for free, tack the labor onto one of my projects and its virtually free). So I can let my 6 year old daughter choose her 3 favorite colors and paint my house god awful ugly as sin. Hell, my daughter would have a blast taking a paint brush and just splattering paint all over the house and you just can't put a price on the laughter and joy of your child. Maybe a random mixture of every shingle color my supplier has in stock (again, free)? Or how about bright red shingles with bright white ones thrown in to spell out a word or two, that would be pretty fun and also perfectly within code.

Generally there aren't any ordinances against lawn ornaments, if I was the lady I would take up as much of my yard with them as possible so there is less to mow. Looks just as bad but at least she would be within code. Personally, I like those big blow up things. Year round giant blow up snow globes, biggest blow up pumpkin she can find and sponge bob (just cause my youngest likes him, I prefer scooby doo) and she's reduced her work by 50%. No ordinance on how long you have to run them either so 15 or 20 minutes a day so that they are in working order and are actively being used but no real jump in the electric bill. Maybe a fuckload of cheap plastic gnomes for the rest?

The above is all perfectly legal in most areas of the country and will have the same, or worse, "effect". Do think I should be able to do that to my property or should the state dictate our lawn decorations and paint schemes too?

Luckily in my neighborhood we just help each other out, even when we really shouldn't have to because whoever we're helping is perfectly capable, because its the neighborly thing to do and frankly it solves the problem a lot quicker and easier. If that lady had lived on my block we would have turned cleaning her yard into a neighborhood BBQ and had a good time doing it. It's a shame so many have gotten away from common decency and genuine kindness.

 

[cabri]

There's a very legitimate reason for proper lawn care.

It's shameful to leave your lawn in bad shape. It's shameful to not wipe your ass after pooping. It's shameful to not brush your teeth on a regular basis. There's a reason why these things are shameful.

An uncontrolled lawn can cause major problems for a neighborhood. Until you have your own lawn to keep care of, and have to face the consequences of failing to keep up on your lawn, you might not understand.

Apartment renters do not care/understand - their complex have services to take care of common areas.

It would be the same if people left their garbage outside the entrance way.

 

[Darwin333]

I always laugh at these threads on AT. You usually have a group of people who don't even own homes up in arms about rules like these. Trust me, they'd change their mind if the neighbor from hell moved in next to them and all sorts of vermin, insects, weeds, etc. moved into their lawn from their neighbor's lawn. These guys act like mowing a lawn once a week is like landing men on the moon.

I have a neighbor that doesn't cut his grass very often. I don't bitch about it, I run the mower over it while I am cutting my grass if his needs it. The neighbor across the street trims it when he does his. If I'm out of town I pay for someone to cut both our yards (again, if his needs it), costs me a whole $20 extra. What a sucker I must be.

 

[Darwin333]

Sure and a yard can get so overgrown that a bear could take up residence and kill nearby kids making tall grass a public health and safety issue. This isn't about what could happen in rare, off the wall situations. Incredibly poor yard maintenance is enough of an issue that lawn height laws are common. Ungodly ugly shingles and paint is not.

That being the case far more people's property values are negatively affected by people who can't be bothered to take care of their yard than people with ugly paint colors



After the real assholes? I am not a lawyer or politician - I cannot 'go after them' to put them in jail. If you are talking about my opinions then you are making an incredibly stupid assumption based on my very vocal posts regarding the handling of wall street

5 second google:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36750484&postcount=64



Are you suggesting that it is not possible to have more than one thing you are concerned about? That I should be so consumed by my concern about Wall Street that I cannot place value on anything else?

Come on- you are better than this

My apologies, I was speaking generally since we keep talking about "society making rules". That same society has obviously placed more concern on grass than what I was speaking of seeing as this lady went to jail and the assholes that caused us all massive very real damage not only didn't go to jail but got to keep their ill-gotten gains.

Hell, there is a sizable portion of society that doesn't think those assholes broke any laws or did anything wrong despite it being absurdly easy to prove that they knowingly committed untold counts of fraud which happens to be something that "society" made illegal a long time ago.

I'm curious, have you written your elected officials demanding that criminal investigations be brought against those people as I have many many times?

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I have a neighbor that doesn't cut his grass very often. I don't bitch about it, I run the mower over it while I am cutting my grass if his needs it. The neighbor across the street trims it when he does his. If I'm out of town I pay for someone to cut both our yards (again, if his needs it), costs me a whole $20 extra. What a sucker I must be.

If you were my neighbor I'd stop cutting grass and just let you handle it.

 

[her209]

Why even buy a house if you aren't willing to take care of it? I'm not talking about people who occasionally let the lawn slip a few days or something like that. I'm talking about morons who let their grass grow 1 ft+ tall, let their paint fall off, gutters/shutters fall, plants grow out of their gutters because they never clean them, etc. In my old subdivision, we had a moron family move in that had like 7 kids. These idiots had plants growing out of their gutters and had a lawn that was at least 12" high with weeds growing 2+ ft tall. It is extremely selfish to your neighbors (not to mention not teaching your kids a damn thing) to live like that. There was NO excuse for it -- several of those kids were old enough to mow. They just refused to mow the lawn. Once the town was called on their property, it was amazing how they magically could mow the lawn.

Oh, and about the exceptionally lame "Why are you entitled to a high 'state-enforced' sales price?" statement -- there are so many things wrong with that statement that I don't even know where to begin. First of all, the "state" doesn't enforce these things to ensure you get high sales prices. I'll let you guys figure out why they do enforce these ordinances. Secondly, who DOESN'T want to get the best price possible on anything they sell, whether it is a house, car, motorcycle, etc?

Don't like the town ordinances or HOA rules? Fair enough -- buy a house outside of town or not in a subdivision in HOA and live in your own white trash hillbilly paradise. Some of us take pride in our homes and don't want to look at the eye sore you're too lazy to take care of.

I could make the same arguments with neighbors who own trashy cars that park in your nice neighborhood. I'm not talking about car owners who don't regularly do oil changes. I'm talking about owners who don't fix big dents in the car panels. And cars with paint oxidation and or differently colored panels. Duct taping plastic wrap to the side windows and back windows where the glass was obvious broken and missing. And don't even get me started on cars that leak oil or spew smoke out of their tailpipe or obviously have mechanical issues just by the sound!

And the neighbors have the gall to park that jalopy in your neighborhood devaluing your home values and driving away home buyers? Selfish bastards!

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I could make the same arguments with neighbors who own trashy cars that park in your nice neighborhood. I'm not talking about car owners who don't regularly do oil changes. I'm talking about owners who don't fix big dents in the car panels. And cars with paint oxidation and or differently colored panels. Duct taping plastic wrap to the side windows and back windows where the glass was obvious broken and missing. And don't even get me started on cars that leak oil or spew smoke out of their tailpipe or obviously have mechanical issues just by the sound!

And the neighbors have the gall to park that jalopy in your neighborhood devaluing your home values and driving away home buyers? Selfish bastards!

Oh look, another nonsense analogy!

Do you own a home?

 

[Thebobo]

Yep, I like our system. I don't want anyone to go to jail but I also don't want eyesores in my neighborhood.

Do you cover your face when you leave your house?

 

[Matt1970]

Do you cover your face when you leave your house?

All those comedians out of work and you crack those kind of jokes for free?

 

[Pipeline 1010]

So not mowing your lawn is now equal to slavery? Okayyyyy|

Wow, how is THIS what you comprehended as my point? Anybody with a decent level of skill at reading comprehension might have gleaned that my point was actually that something can be both wrong and yet also still the will of the people. Therefore "the will of the people" shouldn't be used as proof that something is not actually wrong.

Maybe you just had a brain derp and genuinely misunderstood what I was trying to say. I really hope you didn't intentionally choose to misrepresent my opinion and make it look like I argued not mowing lawn == slavery, because that's kind of an asshole thing to do.

I think people should mow their lawn, but not have their freedom taken away and be given a criminal record for not doing so. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo-the-law's-the-law doesn't cut it for me.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Does legal authority work better for you?

Legal authority can only legitimately exist when Natural Law precedes it. Getting together with people casting secret ballots does not change evil into good.

Lol, that's what I said three pages ago. Taxes are "extortion." I don't know what your fascination with that word is. The same as capital punishment is "murder" or jail is "kidnapping."

What did you say 3 pages ago? That I think ALL taxes are extortion? Where did I say that. Leap of faith you've taken there.

You cannot be that dense though. Who said capital punishment was murder? That's just ignorance you're swimming in there and sadly its almost like you like it......

If someone is on death row they most likely had a day in court in which they were charged with MURDER and after being FOUND GUILTY they are given your capital punishment.

Caging someone for any of the stupid shit laws (like drugs) is exactly that, kidnapping. Most likely shortly after they'll also issue a ransom in which the person can be released after payment but thats just FYI.

What you fail to comprehend is that the religion called the State has exempted itself from responsibility at your expense and will continue to plunder and subjugate the masses as long as you continue worshiping.

So you won't mind if I casually brew small batched of meth in the basement next to your home........ it's really none of your business.

Nope I wouldn't mind at all. Have at it but keep in mind you bare the brunt of any damages you cause to someone else. Should I expect you to be up late?

 

[halik]

Lol libertopian nutjubs with minimal education out in full force here.

Freedom and 'murica means i can do whatever I want and negative externalities be damned! I'm gonna build a nuclear reactor to power my house and shit in my front lawn to fertilize it, fuck all yall!

 

[OverVolt]

The housing market is very much built on a house of cards, one that is propped up by the government and numerous other self-interested parties - the banks wouldn't have imploded in 2008 if it wasn't.

And it's those who insist that only certain people should be homeowners that are the assholes.

If by certain people you mean people with 20% down cash then yes.

 

[Pipeline 1010]

Lol libertopian nutjubs with minimal education out in full force here.

Freedom and 'murica means i can do whatever I want and negative externalities be damned! I'm gonna build a nuclear reactor to power my house and shit in my front lawn to fertilize it, fuck all yall!

So you are LOLing at people who don't think that someone should go to jail over yardwork? You think that is all it takes to be a nutjub? What is wrong with you?

You know, it's possible that someone can be against jailing somebody for yardwork, yet not support personal fission reactors in a neighbor's home.

 

[bradley]

This is an opposing example of how major home improvements (which DO greatly increase property values) can be unwelcome additions in some communities -- based on drastic differences in aesthetics, values and functionality.

Something has got to give when land values greatly outstrip the worth of the actual home itself. Although I actually blame poor city planning/zoning and improper taxation.

Neighborhood frustration grows as mansionization continues in L.A.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-mansionization-frustration-20141022-story.html#page=1

 

[Bitek]

This is an opposing example of how major home improvements (which DO greatly increase property values) can be unwelcome additions in some communities -- based on drastic differences in aesthetics, values and functionality.

Something has got to give when land values greatly outstrip the worth of the actual home itself. Although I actually blame poor city planning/zoning and improper taxation.

Neighborhood frustration grows as mansionization continues in L.A.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-mansionization-frustration-20141022-story.html#page=1

The woman in that story is a complete nut.

Oh, and mow your lawn you slobs. Nobody wants to live next to trash.

 

[WackyDan]

We have a problem property across the street from us. She hardly ever mows... has Virginia Creeper growing all over her house and up to the roof... Poison Summac has taken over... The side walk is nearly taken over by weeds and there are pricker bushes growing into the walk. A couple of times neighbors have cleared the tree branches and pricker bushes from the walk and she called the police. That is the sort of asshole she is.

When she does mow, it is only under threat from local code enforcement. She then leaves all the cuttings in the street side gutter to rot away and clog the rain water sewer.

It has been going like this for ten years.

The people in the ops article are not just recently neglecting their property, but have been doing so for a long time. If you can't afford the house or the time to maintain it, then you should be renting an apartment somewhere or owning a townhouse.

If you buy a house in a nice neighborhood you should expect others to keep up their houses appearance/maintenance. It is understandable that sudden unemployment, death or disability can cause a neighbor to not maintain the basics, but long term there needs to be a plan.

My neighbor was served foreclosure last year and somehow managed to avoid it... I hate to say this, but I'm hoping she gets served again and we are rid of her. I hate to see what the inside of that house looks like.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I don't own a house, no.

Can any of the house owners explain why they think they're entitled to a state-enforced value?

A Clue. Get one. State-enforced value? No, it's called being able to live in a nice looking neighborhood.

 

[Blanky]

The fact she has jobs and kids puts her in the same group as everybody else who maintains their lawns. If she's pretending that having a job and kids precludes taking care of the lawn, that speaks to her mindset.

Basically her front yard was atrocious and bringing down property values. Ultimately, what can you do if somebody continues to disobey reasonable laws and their disobedience affects those around them?

I live in a nice neighborhood and in my immediate area we all care for our properties except for one house that lets their yard go to trash. It directly is impacting the ability of other houses to command top dollar when selling. People who don't at least hold their own and live in a neighborhood need to be put in line.

My neighbor was served foreclosure last year and somehow managed to avoid it... I hate to say this, but I'm hoping she gets served again and we are rid of her. I hate to see what the inside of that house looks like.

Shouldn't hate to say it. It's really destructive the damage one house can do to a local area by looking like shit and not being cared for properly. I bet a lot of your neighbors were thrilled when she got put into foreclosure and also hope it happens again.

 

[Veliko]

Basically her front yard was atrocious and bringing down property values.

It's astonishing how this justification is so freely and openly being used to rationalise putting someone in jail.

 

[Veliko]

A Clue. Get one. State-enforced value? No, it's called being able to live in a nice looking neighborhood.

Why do you think you're entitled to a state-enforced "nice looking neighborhood2?

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Obviously there are no restricted deed properties on the other side of the pond. When you purchase a house with a restricted deed you have to sign documentation that you will follow the guidelines which include maintaining your property.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Why do you think you're entitled to a state-enforced "nice looking neighborhood2?

Why do you think you're not entitled to that? People pay local taxes, HOA dues, etc. and most do have this expectation. And here is an even bigger clue -- if something happens and someone isn't able to take care of their home temporarily in one of these areas, most neighbors pitch in and gladly help.

Again, I choose where I want to live. If I didn't want to live with these sorts of rules and regulations, I'd move outside of town limits or an HOA. NO ONE is forcing any of this on you. The problem is that you guys think you should have all the "freedom" you want with NONE of the responsibility. We're not asking people to perform brain surgery every week or two; we're asking them to keep their properties in good shape. For most, taking care of the lawn is a couple hours per week. If you can't do that, you're wasting your money and should stay in an apartment. As a long-time homeowner, I'm always amazed at idiots who buy homes and clearly never sat down and thought about what that meant and then whine because they might have to do a little work.

It's astonishing how this justification is so freely and openly being used to rationalise putting someone in jail.

What is really astonishing is that this person repeatedly defied orders to get the property in shape and then cries when the consequences are applied. I thought jail was a bit too much for her until I read that. Now? Well, the moron should've listened, shouldn't she?

Lol libertopian nutjubs with minimal education out in full force here.

Freedom and 'murica means i can do whatever I want and negative externalities be damned! I'm gonna build a nuclear reactor to power my house and shit in my front lawn to fertilize it, fuck all yall!

:thumbsup: