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?
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.)
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you are confused. Zoning is not words, zoning is a set of regulations. There is no zoning for an Indian restaurant yet you can open one in a commercial lot and can't in a residential or agricultural. Same with homeless camps: there is no specific zoning for a homeless camp only but they are much easier to keep in commercial lots than residential, where it will immediately run into occupancy limits, impervious cover, trash and other restrictions.
Where do you live? Where I live, the overnight occupancy limit for commercial zoning is 0 people, so (at least here) your comment makes no sense. I think commercial zoning that allows anyone to live on the property is basically rare. So if you live in a weird place where its ok for people to live on commercial zoned property, then I agree, that is super weird. But if not, then your issue is just enforcement. In which case, yea I agree, laws should be enforced, but again that has nothing to do with zoning.
I doubt very much there is any place in the US where overnight occupancy is 0 for a commercial property. Where I live you can have a 24 hour business. Living in commercial property is forbidden, but what exactly is living is up to the code officer. In my case the officer decided that homeless did not live there but just visited the business.
Ok by why does the code officer enforce the zoning code in residential zones but not the commercial ones? It’s not like anyone doing their job in good faith could confuse a business patron and someone camping out in a parking lot.
Seems like your code officer is obviously crooked. Not sure what that has to do with zoning though.
Camping in front of business is not against the code, people used to do that for big movie openings or for other commercial events some time ago. With the residential property there are actual overnight occupancy limits which are easy to show being violated. And the occupancy is just one of the codes which would be easy to prove violated by a camp on a residential property, there are tons of other codes. Where I live, you cannot replace an exterior door without a permit, while the commercial zoning is much more permissive.
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.)
I am glad that going directly after illegal behavior is an option for you but I live in a blue city, where DA practices "restorative justice" and the mayor allowed homeless to camp everywhere by a decree (it took a referendum and numerous lawsuits to remove giant camps he created out of downtown, they are still free to camp in residential areas despite the referendum explicitly forbidding that on top of the city and state laws to the safe effect). Nobody gets ticketed for noise, the "defund police" campaign from 2020 ended with the police not even enforcing traffic anymore so nobody is holding small business responsible.
Well, you should probably respond to the person who could not figure any downsides of a mom and pop store in a residential neighborhood because I am well aware of the downsides.
I don't see anything wrong with being selfish but your comment still made me giggle: you want me to bend over to provide your specific benefit or you will call me bad words.
Very specific problem to me = zoning laws and higher prices for everyone. You could be a victim of crystal stores allowing homeless camps on their lot, act now!
This is why I openly call myself a NIMBY and don’t feel bad about it. I paid good money for the house, my family lives there, and I expect the neighborhood to stay clean and safe. Damn right, not in my backyard.
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?
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?
But the city allows it. And it has everything to do with zoning. If it was a house next door allowing a homeless encampment the owner would be paying fines, at least, not to mention he would be living in a homeless camp, which is not something most homeowners are eager to do.
> If it was a house next door allowing a homeless encampment the owner would be paying fines
I don't see why this is to be expected, but a business shouldn't expect to pay a fine
>not to mention he would be living in a homeless camp, which is not something most homeowners are eager to do.
Again, most business owners are not eager to do this either. You've told an anecdote that doesn't support your argument because it's not common (an understatement) for businesses to be a homeless camp, so to use that as an argument for why someone wouldn't want to live next to a business is ridiculous.
>I don't see why this is to be expected, but a business shouldn't expect to pay a fine
Understandable, you don't seem to know what zoning does so it might not be evident to you that commercial zoning is different from residential and available property uses are also different. Residential zoning restricts the occupancy and structures you can have on your property more so than commercial. That's why if you run a store in your house you will be fined unless you keep your customers and vendors under a very low limit and running a store from a commercial lot does not get you fined, for example.
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.
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.
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."
Wherever it's legal for them to do what they do. In my city it's illegal to camp on the streets. And yes, I don't think the fact that they are homeless is a problem, the fact that they harass citizens with the permission of the government is.
So you're really just full on board with the Ebenezer Scrooge "if they would rather die, then let them get on with it!" school of thought, then, huh?
It's been a while since I had to break out the I Don't Know How To Tell You You Should Care About Other People; most people at least pretend that they're not absolute moral voids.
You should care about other people, I think: the people who live in American cities and being harassed by homeless. Nobody is above the law, being on drugs or mentally ill is not an excuse. And if you cared about the homeless, you'd understand than continuing with shielding them from the law is not going to end with the people saying "Fuck the laws and the Constitution, let them be themselves!".
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 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.
I had been reporting the property to code every week - it's indeed against the law to allow people to live in a commercial property. The code officer they've sent was unable to find people living on the property each time, she said that the people hanging around the property are just guests of the of the owner and don't live there.
