Dreaming of Colorado.... Don't

[squatting dog]

This is troubling to say the least. 

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07/colorado-man-kicked-off-property-motorhome/

The opening paragraph of the story:
In the mountains outside of Denver, Colorado, Clem Smith was looking to accomplish his dream. After being homeless for 6 years, Smith inherited $214,000, and set about buying his own property and eventually building a house. The government then stepped in and starting fining him for having a motor home and storage container on his own property. Now Smith faces possible seizure of his property and eviction from his own land.

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I thought this thread was important enough to put the description in myself. It will not be a regular thing. We still want each of you to put in a description of any links you post.

Be careful! This is an important topic and I hope we can discuss, but, it can very easily turn political and then we will be forced to close it. 

 

[jonsun]

been going on for a long time. They all want us to believe tyranny happens at the federal government level but in reality its the local level. Had he been "connected" and greased some palms they would've left him alone. It's why I dont have interest in working for a piece of land over fulltiming. This is how they used to shut down communes in the 60's, find "code violations." Some places are now banning collecting water. You join the rat race or you're lowering my property value.

Guy on another board had a piece of land he inherited. The land was about 5 acres but ran length wise along a road so he couldn't go "back" on the property hence he was visible to the road. He built a little shed to code and put in a cistern, a few panels, and a composting toilet. City council mysteriously decided you have to have a septic tank one day. Well he couldn't afford it and had to leave. He was homeless again.

 

[CautionToTheWind]

Sad. Too bad he didn't think of putting up a temporary or permanent pole barn (layman: dirt floor garage building). Hindsight 20/20.

 

[tx2sturgis]

'unless a house is being built'....

There's always a loophole...

Stick a shovel in the dirt.

Instantly, you now have construction in progress.

A friend of mine in the Northern New Mexico mountains bought a small piece of land that allowed 'temporary' residence in a trailer or motorhome for 5 years to start construction, and 3 years after that. Total of 8 years.

I think that is very reasonable.

 

[Richard]

With regard to identifying the 'problem' in the story linked-to in the original post, I used to have this as my 'signature' on this forum:

"An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs."

The road to hell is paved with 'good intentions'.

 

[lenny flank]

Well, there is a good reason why we have building codes and fire codes.

I like Costa Rica's approach to public utilities: under their constitution, every Tico citizen has guaranteed access to essential utilities---sanitation, water, and electricity. So even if you build a tar-paper farm house on the side of a volcano in the jungle somewhere, the utility companies will run lines all the way out there to you. And if there are at least five kids in your area, the school system will hire a teacher and build a school there.

 

[tx2sturgis]

So even if you build a tar-paper farm house on the side of a volcano in the jungle somewhere, the utility companies will run lines all the way out there to you.

Sounds like all the property owners in the path of the new utility lines have no rights or options...

Imminent domain carried to the extreme.

Count me out.

 

[lenny flank]

^
I doubt there are many other property owners on the side of the volcano.

If there are, they get hooked up too.

 

[tx2sturgis]

Lol...good enough.

 

[SoulRaven]

Some have limits on how long you can be in an RV before completing construction. It is not unusual for counties without any other codes (said to have NONE) to require a septic system be installed. Always check very carefully, and have the city/county make you a copy of the regulation or make your own from an online website. Make sure you understand exactly what is being said or read, as they make it "tricky" with "wiggle room" on their side, not yours. I have been so disappointed that it is nearly impossible to have land without a hassle attached to it.

 

[Ballenxj]

So, A guy buys a piece of property, then the authorities come along and tell him what he can, and cannot own and store on it?

 

[TrainChaser]

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and all of the other Founders are spinning in their graves.

All you have to do to have a society like ours is to do it a bit at a time. Like putting a frog in cool water, and then turning up the heat gradually.

 

[user 423]

^
Right, they wanted to continue to own the people they owned...

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

And don't even get me started on "Water Rights" in the west.

In WY, all the water in the state already belongs to somebody.  Want to drill a well?  You need a permit from the State Engineer to get permission to "appropriate" underground water.

 

[Gary68]

luckily we live in a country that elects it's officials so this guy can run for office,get elected and change the rules

 

[jonsun]

He could also play the lottery, win, and move anywhere he wants!

 

[jimindenver]

I have been wanting to buy land in Colorado so that I could put a trailer on it like a cabin instead of dragging it up and down the mountains each time. There has always been cheap land but finding land where they allow mobile homes or travel trailers is rare.

 

[sushidog]

Moral of the story, buying property makes you a revenue target of the state. I lost my family home to property taxes and I know of others who have struggled with keeping theirs and later have even had to sell theirs cause the taxes got too high and the local ordinances prevented them from using the property to generate income to necessary to pay the taxes. Heck I couldn't repaint my house a different color without the town's permission, and if I ever took my fence down (or it got damaged in a storm) they wouldn't let me put up a new one exactly like the one I had. They said my home was "historic." I said it was just old. They won.

I was talking to a friend earlier this week who has a nice, older, New Orleans home on an acre and a half in the garden district. He makes a good income but is being forced to sell his inherited home that's been in the family for 3 generations. He shared with me that his recent annual property tax bill was over $40,000. Add to this homeowner's insurance, sewer, water, garbage pick-up, electricity, natural gas, lawn maintenance, repairs, etc. and I don't see how anyone can retire and live in a house like that. Even if they made a good living and receive the max SS benefits, that's still less than their property tax bill alone, not to mention all the other bills! They just recently passed an ordinance saying you couldn't have a boat or RV parked on your property. They even make you buy a permit to park your car in front of your house! My niece just inherited an old shotgun style fixer-upper, and with it an annual property tax bill of over $10,000 a year - and that's for a modest 70 yr old home that you can see daylight through the cracks in the walls! I just don't understand it anymore. How can "normal" people survive?

No thank you. It's a full-time mobile retirement for me. I simply can't afford to do otherwise, and frankly, I don't see how most seniors can afford to live in a decent S&B that took them 30 years to pay off. What happened to our freedom to live unmolested by our very own government?

Chip

 

[Richard]

...What happened to our freedom to live unmolested by our very own government?

I don't think anything happened to our freedom, at least not in the sense that it was somehow taken away in an explicit struggle. Instead, I think that what 'happened to' the experience of freedom is that people, overall, became gradually accustomed to enjoying said freedom to the point that they forgot that freedom was/is something to be vigilantly guarded. In that sense, what 'happened to' our freedom is our sense of uninvolvement in the process of vigilant guardianship. To deny this is to suggest that the sort of resistance that historically has been employed by an oppressed population seeking liberty has somehow become ineffective. I don't subscribe to that notion. And, by not subscribing to that, it shouldn't be misunderstood that I'm advocating for raging chaos or senseless violence as a means to change. Sure, it has many times been a necessary evolution in the struggle for liberty but it's not necessarily the first, nor the only, step one may choose to take.

Whatever steps one chooses, it should be noted that solidarity and participation are key ingredients. People cannot agree what to stand for unless they talk about their options. And, having talked through the options, it isn't enough merely to express one's intellectual assent to an idea -- one must be prepared to act in concert with the idea.

Along this line, we may be familiar with what Frederick Douglass has famously said in his 1857 West India Emancipation speech: (bold emphasis mine)

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

In Douglass' vernacular, we are living amidst "the exact measure of injustice and wrong" that we "will quietly submit to". And, as he so clearly stated, this exact measure of injustice/wrong, very likely, "will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both."

I think one of the bigger questions to attend to within this context is what our individual part to play consists of. What are we to do, and when shall we begin?

That said, I recently discovered a quote that appears correctly attributed to none other than Lily Tomlin. I think it powerfully sums up what happened to our freedoms:



In closing, the following excerpt from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot#Etymology may prove insightful:

Idiot is a word derived from the Greek ἰδιώτης, idiōtēs ("person lacking professional skill", "a private citizen", "individual"), from ἴδιος, idios ("private", "one's own").[1] In ancient Greece, people who were not capable of engaging in the public sphere were considered "idiotes", in contrast to the public citizen, or "polites"[2]. In Latin the word idiota ("ordinary person, layman") preceded the Late Latin meaning "uneducated or ignorant person".[3]
...
An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs.[7] Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalized education.[7] In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education (although citizenship was also largely hereditary). "Idiot" originally referred to a "layman, person lacking professional skill". Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis (city state), was considered dishonorable. ...

I've no intent to make this a 'political post'. I've not taken any particular partisan side, nor have I aimed to 'bicker' with any particular side. I've described what I believe a fair-minded evaluation of the question of what may have happened to our freedoms. I hope I've prudently expressed myself in such a way that this post isn't targeted for deletion under the authority of 'no political posts in the forum'. We shall see.

 

[lenny flank]

Meh, nothing at all happened to our freedoms. They're still there just as they always were.

The real gripe in America (and Russia, and France, and Japan......), I think, is that some people want "freedoms" for themselves, but not for "those people".

An old problem with any civilization, going all the way back to the Sumerians.