Thursday, October 15, 2015

Neighborhood cleanup?

Gone seem to be the days of people truly caring about their neighborhoods.

Too many people who move into homes act as if it is all a temporary situation without true concern for the concept of what being a neighbor means.

On the one side of our home that house has seen at least seven or eight different groups of people in it in the whole seventeen years that we have been living in our home.
I said it that way since not all were families, many were roommates or non-married groups with not necessarily family biological legal connections, which is fine. One group of guys were roofers; serendipity-wise for us they were there when our roof was taken off by the hurricane, they came over and helped tarp us during the storm's wrath. Once even a lovely retired couple rented it one winter, but they used to rent our home for years before we purchased it in 1998, ours had been a rental, we were told for eight years. 

The people who owned it that we purchased it from lived in Minnesota.
It had been overgrown and was basically a fixer upper on a saltwater canal, five minutes from the harbor by boat and we both saw its potential.
Any-who, we had begun the renovations before 2004 when Hurricane Charley hit and had to start all over after, and since have been maintaining it the way we ended up having it and nearly done. Eventually, we will need to make more modifications due to my physical needs but for now we are managing well and I love our little castle of just over one thousand square feet! It is cheerful and inviting inside and out.
So it disheartens me so very much when we leave to go anywhere and see how our neighborhood has changed.
Trash not picked up on front lawns and lawns and bushes so tall houses are disappearing behind them. Vehicles, tractor trailers parked on our narrow streets or too many in driveways or on lawns as if they are in the country where many are hidden by just being out there, spread out far from other neighbors, not as in suburbia where we are all on quarter acre lots sized apart and so it makes it look sloppy.   

Hubby was on the phone again this morning with building code enforcement and the sheriff's office and even has a call into our areas county commissioner. He worked with code years ago when he worked as a community policing officer and so it is doubly hard for him to accept the attitudes that so many seem to have of it not being enforced without jumping through more bureaucratic hoops, the laws are there, they just have to enforce them.
A deputy came out today after the head of code said he has told the tractor trailer driver over and over again, but there's a loophole of a ten day issue. This same tractor trailer fellow lives in a broken down trailer behind his brother-in-laws house that is a rented one; just on the other-side of the empty lot from us, and there are also about three extra cars parked there that don't move, and as far as we know there are only three people living there, we think. The deputy had him move the tractor trailer into the driveway, not good or according to the law!
Our better neighbor, who also has been renting for quite a few years, next door, has a two story everglades type buggy that he keeps in his backyard with his gate wide open, which is legal,Hubby says, but it is seen, and now he has put a wooden trailer stacked with junk on his front lawn for the last week! (Update: Hubby just spoke with him, it's from another home of his wife's that had to be gutted from bad renters not reporting a leaky roof and just moving out, he's moving it in the backyard tonight, see even renters have bad renters.)   

The disappearing house is across the street and the other  lawn garbage is next door to it.

I have checked on occasion our homes value on Zillo, and was pleasantly surprised to see it had risen thirty thousand dollars since we had refinanced with HARP two and half years ago, but recently, within the last month it has gone down five thousand.

So even if we wanted to move, we probably could not sell with these non-caring neighbors!
This is called being between a rock and a hard place, but I love my little jewel no-longer a stone in the rough, but in a very tough neighborhood that is not that far from becoming crime ridden with all this mess!

Ironically, we had chosen this to be our last home due to its proximity to so many good things, if we could only jump over the messes on our way in and out...

 Why can't people care?
It makes me so very sad.
I do understand it is a matter of priorities and everyone's different.

On that note with just trying to change the world from our small part of it, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask all of you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know whom and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!
 

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