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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 13:34:07 :
In Reply to: Re: MUST GO ! City complaint posted by Jerry in Idaho [64.139.238.43] on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 12:15:17 :
The trouble with enforcing blight ordinances is just what you said -- what one person thinks is great someone else thinks is junk. Typical problems I've seen are "art" made out of welded-together scrap metal, yards that are planted with native shrubbery and wildflowers (rather than mown grass), plastic kiddie toys strewn all over the yard (pretty hard to avoid if you have a lot of kids), building materials being saved for a project that isn't started yet (he's been going to use them for that garage he's been going to build for the last 20 years), and of course rare classic automobiles in the process of restoration or recycling (aka "junk cars").
Where do you draw the line? Either we do like a gated community and force everyone to abide by very strict rules, or agree that part of getting along with each other when living close together is that if the sight of some particular thing on someone else's property bothers you, point your eyeballs somewhere else. Otherwise the bird-lover complains that her neighbors trucks are ugly, and the truck guy complains that his neighbor's yard is grown up in weeds, and the guy with the weird yard art complains about the neighbors who have 6 kids and 3 dogs and kid/dog stuff all over the yard, and the mom of the kids complains about the weird yard art, and they all find out that actually they're all violating something in the blight ordinance and nobody's happy with the outcome.