Neighbors using front of house as parking lot

[badcrc]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Washington

I live in a rural unincorporated part of the city on a lake where the lots are only about 70 feet wide. Each lot is about 1/4 - 1/2 acre. My neighbor on one side has had his grandkids living with him for about 20 years, and as those kids have become older they are a real nuisance to both them and every other neighbor. The kids are in their mid 20s and only one of them lives there all the time now (I will call him Waldo). Waldo basically turned their entire yard into an automotive junkyard. In the last 6-7 years he started parking vehicles on the side of the road in front of their fence. They couldn't receive mail because of those vehicles so Waldo got another mailbox and put it into a weighted bucket and he moves it around by the street depending on what junked vehicles he has parked up there at the time. Now in the last 5 years or so they started parking all their "spill-over" on the shoulder in front of our house and on the shoulder in front of our neighbor's house on the other side. It's progressively getting worse every week. Over the summer I came home to find an RV parked from our mailbox all the way down to the other neighbor's property. We still got mail but the mail person had to pull up in front of the RV and backup to reach our mailbox. After it was there for about 3 days with an extension cord across our driveway, I pulled the extension cord out and threw it across the street into the ditch. Apparently the other grandkid (we'll call him Bobo) was temporarily staying in the RV and saw me (I didn't care if anyone saw me or not). Bilbo came out ranting and raving and threatening me, which I am used to and ignored it. Bilbo has threatened my life a couple times in the past, once because he was screaming obscenities at someone in their yard and I told him to watch his language while my 6 year old nieces were in the yard. Now for 3 weeks we had 20 foot flatbed trailer parked in that spot, until yesterday he moved it and when I left for work this morning he had an RV trailer there with an extension cord ran across our driveway from their house.

Now here is where it gets convoluted. I wanted to know if they could legally park there, and if so, if it was legal to swap out vehicles constantly and basically just use the front of our house as a parking facility for their crap. I emailed the county and had them send me the last known documents showing the setbacks for the county right-of-way, which was 60 feet total. Now around our entire lake there isn't one spot with 60 feet available, there isn't even a spot with 30 feet available. Even my neighbors who are parking in front of my house had their fence moved all the way up to the street, leaving only about 6 feet between the fence and the street. This was when I was a kid, before his grandkids were born, and ironically he did it to stop the neighbors across the street from parking in front of his house. The only place in the entire area with a large boulevard to park is in front of our house and our neighbor's house on the other side of us. Our fence is about 20 feet from the street. Obviously one option here is to just move our fence all the way up like my neighbor did 30 years ago. The problem with that is it would look weird since our fence connects to the neighbor's fence on the other side of us, so I would have to make sure he wants to do it too and/or is OK with me doing it. I don't want to be a bad neighbor unlike these other people. I also would like to preserve the area outside of our fence and keep it clean and I would like to be able to use it sometimes when we have family gatherings, or when I want to temporarily park my boat trailer up there...which I can't ever do now because they always have a vehicle there.

I'm at my wits end here and have tried calling the sheriff, the county, the abandoned vehicle department, and there doesn't seem to be much that can be done unless I want to break county code and move our fence. By the way, our fence and everyone else's is already in that setback of 60 feet anyway, so technically the county could have every single person move their fences and property to widen the road or something at some point.

 

[LdiJ]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Washington

I live in a rural unincorporated part of the city on a lake where the lots are only about 70 feet wide. Each lot is about 1/4 - 1/2 acre. My neighbor on one side has had his grandkids living with him for about 20 years, and as those kids have become older they are a real nuisance to both them and every other neighbor. The kids are in their mid 20s and only one of them lives there all the time now (I will call him Waldo). Waldo basically turned their entire yard into an automotive junkyard. In the last 6-7 years he started parking vehicles on the side of the road in front of their fence. They couldn't receive mail because of those vehicles so Waldo got another mailbox and put it into a weighted bucket and he moves it around by the street depending on what junked vehicles he has parked up there at the time. Now in the last 5 years or so they started parking all their "spill-over" on the shoulder in front of our house and on the shoulder in front of our neighbor's house on the other side. It's progressively getting worse every week. Over the summer I came home to find an RV parked from our mailbox all the way down to the other neighbor's property. We still got mail but the mail person had to pull up in front of the RV and backup to reach our mailbox. After it was there for about 3 days with an extension cord across our driveway, I pulled the extension cord out and threw it across the street into the ditch. Apparently the other grandkid (we'll call him Bobo) was temporarily staying in the RV and saw me (I didn't care if anyone saw me or not). Bilbo came out ranting and raving and threatening me, which I am used to and ignored it. Bilbo has threatened my life a couple times in the past, once because he was screaming obscenities at someone in their yard and I told him to watch his language while my 6 year old nieces were in the yard. Now for 3 weeks we had 20 foot flatbed trailer parked in that spot, until yesterday he moved it and when I left for work this morning he had an RV trailer there with an extension cord ran across our driveway from their house.

Now here is where it gets convoluted. I wanted to know if they could legally park there, and if so, if it was legal to swap out vehicles constantly and basically just use the front of our house as a parking facility for their crap. I emailed the county and had them send me the last known documents showing the setbacks for the county right-of-way, which was 60 feet total. Now around our entire lake there isn't one spot with 60 feet available, there isn't even a spot with 30 feet available. Even my neighbors who are parking in front of my house had their fence moved all the way up to the street, leaving only about 6 feet between the fence and the street. This was when I was a kid, before his grandkids were born, and ironically he did it to stop the neighbors across the street from parking in front of his house. The only place in the entire area with a large boulevard to park is in front of our house and our neighbor's house on the other side of us. Our fence is about 20 feet from the street. Obviously one option here is to just move our fence all the way up like my neighbor did 30 years ago. The problem with that is it would look weird since our fence connects to the neighbor's fence on the other side of us, so I would have to make sure he wants to do it too and/or is OK with me doing it. I don't want to be a bad neighbor unlike these other people. I also would like to preserve the area outside of our fence and keep it clean and I would like to be able to use it sometimes when we have family gatherings, or when I want to temporarily park my boat trailer up there...which I can't ever do now because they always have a vehicle there.

I'm at my wits end here and have tried calling the sheriff, the county, the abandoned vehicle department, and there doesn't seem to be much that can be done unless I want to break county code and move our fence. By the way, our fence and everyone else's is already in that setback of 60 feet anyway, so technically the county could have every single person move their fences and property to widen the road or something at some point.

So, every one of the vehicles in their yard is properly registered and tagged? That is the only reason I can think of why the county wouldn't start towing them.

 

[badcrc]

So, every one of the vehicles in their yard is properly registered and tagged? That is the only reason I can think of why the county wouldn't start towing them.

Some are, some aren't. He always gets new junkers to fix and parks them either in front of their house or in their yard, then he has to move something up by our house temporarily to make room. A couple times he left a vehicle there for more than a couple weeks and I reported it as abandoned, but nothing came of it. He probably moved it or sold it and swapped it for another vehicle. This is the problem is all legal issues revolve around one vehicle sitting somewhere. What happens when it's a continuous stream of non-abandoned vehicles? I also found out a couple years ago he is running an RV rental business without rental insurance and without rental registration, and probably without a business license or anything that goes along with it. He just posts on craigslist. I thought maybe that was a way to stop at least these RVs and bus type vehicles he keeps parking up there, so I notified the state and county but nothing came of it.

I really am not one of those neighbors that complains about every little thing, but this is way over the top. I don't complain about noise or anything else. Driving down our driveway seeing their junkyard every day, dealing with strangers running around in front of our property all the time working on these vehicles, and regularly Waldo and his buddies sitting in the RVs drinking all night. I can't even leave my garbage or recycling out for more than a couple hours after it's emptied because more than once as they were walking by to their vehicle in front of my property they dumped all their beer bottles and garbage in my cans. I'm sure I could pay a lawyer to find something I could go after, like a nuisance clause, or harassment, or something about a neighbor's property being an eye sore, and either go to court or have the lawyer threaten them with letters. But I was looking for another way that's less my fault, and more "oh that's too bad the county won't let you do that anymore" type thing. I do have to live next to these people until they move or die, and I will probably be dead before they are, maybe at their hands the way it's starting to look.

 

[FarmerJ]

You posted >I live in a rural unincorporated part of the city < either where you live is indeed a city or it is a rural township that more than likely follows county ordinances since it would not have any of its own. It appears that your best bet would be to go after your so called elected officials after you do a bit more research, First you want to know what your county ordinances are regarding use of Rvs as residences , you want to learn if your county has any ordinances addressing how many hours a vehicle can be parked on a street, you want to know what your counties so called zoning rules are regarding business use of residential property. You want to also learn if there is a ordinance that forbids parking on the so called boulevard strips of peoples land that is along a public road ( you know how like some towns /cities- burbs will ticket people who part way on the road and partway on the lawn along the road ) Last but not least consider running to be on your county board and propose ordinances to address so called nuisance issues. OR personally become well known at every county board meeting including getting time to speak to them in those meetings and make their lack of doing any thing election issues, since a huge one might be the continual use of the public road as parking space if that use could hinder emergency vehicles from safely passing. ( Your communities public library should have county ordinances reference materials to review / copy and if your public library does not then insist they get them or go to your county government center , It has a law library that was paid for by taxpayers in your county, the clerks there can at least tell you enough information as to how to look it up

 

[badcrc]

You posted >I live in a rural unincorporated part of the city < either where you live is indeed a city or it is a rural township that more than likely follows county ordinances since it would not have any of its own. It appears that your best bet would be to go after your so called elected officials after you do a bit more research, First you want to know what your county ordinances are regarding use of Rvs as residences , you want to learn if your county has any ordinances addressing how many hours a vehicle can be parked on a street, you want to know what your counties so called zoning rules are regarding business use of residential property. You want to also learn if there is a ordinance that forbids parking on the so called boulevard strips of peoples land that is along a public road ( you know how like some towns /cities- burbs will ticket people who part way on the road and partway on the lawn along the road ) Last but not least consider running to be on your county board and propose ordinances to address so called nuisance issues. OR personally become well known at every county board meeting including getting time to speak to them in those meetings and make their lack of doing any thing election issues, since a huge one might be the continual use of the public road as parking space if that use could hinder emergency vehicles from safely passing. ( Your communities public library should have county ordinances reference materials to review / copy and if your public library does not then insist they get them or go to your county government center , It has a law library that was paid for by taxpayers in your county, the clerks there can at least tell you enough information as to how to look it up

Yes you're right. You're basically saying I need to do more to figure this out and I agree. It's not that I haven't read the county and city code and ordinances, but a lot of it is extremely confusing. Just trying to figure out the right-of-way thing was difficult. I finally talked to some really nice woman in the county office and she emailed me scans of all that old paperwork that was the latest modification of the road design in the area. The reason I even looked into that was because I was thinking I could just move my fence up to where they couldn't park without being on the road and I wanted to know what was legal. Turns out you can pretty much do what you want with your fence, but if the county decides they want that room for something, you have to move it.

Where I live isn't a township, our address is part of the city, but whenever you punch in our address for anything like the garbage collection it asks if it's the unincorporated or incorporated part of the county...it's unincorporated. The zoning is "rural residential", which is another problem with this, because most places zoned that way have acreage and it doesn't really matter if the guy next door has a chicken farm and a junkyard because you don't see it. Here it's tiny lots...bigger than a lot in downtown, but not big enough to give you a buffer from bad neighbors. I have had many issues with these neighbors for years, but all were solved by just doing what everyone should do first, which is deal with them nicely and calmly. That isn't working for this problem because I think my neighbor and his wife are a little intimated by their own grand kid at this point as they get older...Waldo and Bobo both have anger problems for reasons I won't go into, and so does their granddad.

What I've basically decided is if I can't find an alternative I plan on putting some large landscaping rocks or a chain through fence posts from our property line up to the mailbox, about 5-6 feet from the street. That way it's not as expensive to move as a fence, it will prevent anyone from parking along it unless they want to be partially on the street, and I don't have to worry about the neighbors running into it. The downside is going that route I can't even use it for my own parking when I want. This entire thing is mind-blowing to me, not because I'm surprised by their behavior since I've been dealing with it for years, but I don't understand anyone that doesn't care about their neighbors at all. If I was doing something that really pissed off my neighbors, I would stop doing it or change what I'm doing even if it was an inconvenience to me, because I would rather have peace and neighbors that like me than continue doing something I don't have to do. It's almost as if some people just push the boundaries to see if they can get away with it.

 

[FarmerJ]

If you have witnessed the adult grand children being verbally abusive to their grandparents then by all means find your states ombudsmans offices for vulnerable adults / senior citizens and contact them because grandparents may actually be too afraid to act especially if it is giving them some kind of assistance with stuff the rest of us take for granted , like help with med administration / indoor house chores, toileting, cooking, wash. BTW mailing address issues can be a hoot in some places, I had a friend who lived in Brooklyn Center MN that got her mail from a post office zip code that was shared with the far north side of Minneapolis and because of the zip code many things were a huge hassle , like insurance rates were based on that MPLS zip code which were higher than other Brooklyn Ctr residents Also see if you can get them to point you to the exact definition of rural residential ( while you learn if they have lot size definitions that treat similar lots in incorporated areas differently then start arguing to those who can vote to change things to do it because even un incorporated areas like where I live still have some rules too. im, tired , time to get to bed, 3 more nights to go till im off ~~

 

[adjusterjack]

This entire thing is mind-blowing to me, not because I'm surprised by their behavior since I've been dealing with it for years, but I don't understand anyone that doesn't care about their neighbors at all.

They don't care because they are low life trash.

Took me 11 years to understand that my low life trash neighbors would outlast and outlive me. Even the authorities were helpless and I was inside a major city.

My solution: Sell and move.

That was over 25 years ago and the low life family still lives there while I have enjoyed much better places to live since then.

Once those 20 somethings start producing their genetically defective offspring, things will only get worse.