“So does that mean you’re done?
…But you’re done, right? That means you’re done?
Sounds like your lawyers took you for a ride,” our neighbor said to The Guy.
With a hard stare and no response, The Guy turned on his heel and walked away.
For the past 2 years, we have been fighting the county in a complicated legal battle fraught with 1200 pages of historical and legal documents to turn our building into a residence. If I got into all the details, this post would be the size of a dissertation.
But before I get into that murky mess, let me start further back. In 2020, we bought a labradoodle and named her Bobby Bean. Then we bred her and kept two of her puppies.
Well, one of our really cool neighbors, let’s call him J – would walk by with his pitbull. When our dogs would bark at him, he zapped his pitbull until it yelped repeatedly, which caused my dogs to bark more.
Numerous times, I would call out in an effort to have our dogs meet. Mind you, dogs come on our property all the time and there has never been an issue when they are allowed to meet.
Without any indication he could hear me, he’d continue walking and zapping his dog. Eventually, he responded by calling Animal Control on us, which took them 2 hours to drive alllllllll the way out here to inspect the situation. After informing them that I run a pet-friendly business and my dogs meet dozens of dogs every year, they told me “embellished reports” occur often.
So The Guy and I trained them (with absolutely 0 zaps) to stay off the road.
The neighbor J still wanted to walk by our property, this time on the railroad side. With a camera on his chest, a gun in his holster, and a pitbull – he marched confidently by exclaiming that we needed to control our dogs and that this was public land.
On the contrary, the railroad is privately owned and no one has actual rights to walk on it, much less patrol who else can walk on it. So I told J and his wife exactly that.
Their response?
Notify the county that the building we live in is not considered a residence. As if there are not hundreds of unpermitted buildings in rural Oregon – as if he himself does not have a “man shed” that is right on the edge of the lake.
Cue the thousands of pages of paperwork, the lawyer, a legal representative, the land survey, the endless bills, the repeated applications and appeals, and the D-R-A-M-A.
While out enjoying a meal and some drinks at a bonfire, we had strangers approach us asking intrusive questions about our situation. At the end of that conversation, the stranger admitted that J has a reactive temperament and she would not want him as a neighbor.
Another friend tells us J had been in the print shop informing them of the situation – as if the print shop cares about neighborhood drama 15 miles away.
Yet another friend reveals that there has been a lot of talk at the gym. What’s going on?
It turns out J was in the print shop making copies of a notice from the county that was sent out to several neighbors asking for feedback on legalizing our dwelling. Like crusaders on a sanctioned mission, J and his wife started a lofty campaign lobbying against us. We had neighbors we’d never met writing in with negative opinions.
Neighbors who had freely used our land for a decade suddenly had complaints. One day, we even walked out to see piles of dog poop thrown on our walkway.
What in the actual fuck.
Even worse, something weird was happening in the office of Lane County, with a lot of questionable behavior from the planner in charge of our application. After speaking to him, a neighbor we’d always maintained a positive relationship with was suddenly threatening to go to the Land Use Board of Appeals if our application was approved. What the hell was he telling people?
Every path we set forth to legalize our home was met with this planner actively blocking it, as if this affected him on a personal level. At one point, hidden under mounds of emails, we caught that he’d notified every department in his office and even reached out to the state waterway to notify them of our application. That is an overreach in work duties, sir. You need to calm down.
None of his attempts worked however, as we continued to provide all the necessary documents. At one point, I sent a friendly email to all the neighbors inviting them to bring forth legal documents for their claims to use our land. I informed them that the railroad knew of our paperwork allowing septic and water pipes across the rail.
And guess what? Not a single neighbor responded to me.
J and his wife’s response? They notified the railroad – a different department than the one we were already working with – and had them write in to the county against us. Jesus Christ, when does it end?
Over time and after much digging, we uncovered the connection between the planner and his disdain for our application. The planner was a dedicated follower of the man that owned J’s house. That man wrote the bible on mushrooms and has since died, and his son inherited the property. His son now rents the house to J and they are good friends.
In our application, we used Lane County Code 16.291(2)(g) – which states that applicants can:
Legalize a single-family dwelling or manufactured dwelling in conjunction with an existing
commercial use provided there is no other dwelling or single-family living quarters on the same lot or parcel.
As you can see, there can be wide interpretation into such simple language. The day our application was due, within minutes of turning it in, the planner had sent a response of a denial that included a fabricated 3-part geo-spatial “test” he claimed our application did not meet. In the test, he questioned the relationship between the residence and the commercial use (we live here and we run the business), the longevity of that relationship (if legalized, it would be our forever home), and the distance between the two (50 feet).
Seems pretty reasonable, right?
He could have just as easily accepted the application within the confines of the code, which does not specify any additional needed information. So naturally, we appealed his denial. Interestingly enough, at this same time, this planner was volun-told to step down from his position at the county. And we were appointed an “independent, unbiased hearing official” to oversee a hearing examining our application.
Our lawyers suggested that this time, we request positive feedback from our neighbors in support of our application. Some of our friends caught wind of this and decided to start a petition for us. In a large outpouring of love and support, we were able to provide hundreds of signatures and dozens of thoughtful, well-written letters.
Our lawyer expressed that in his 40 years as a land attorney, he’d never experienced anything like this. He felt honored to represent us and was cautiously optimistic.
It took months for the hearing official to make a final decision. But before we heard back, The Guy made an unsettling discovery.
The hearing official had been handpicked by the director, who was the planner’s boss, that overlooked our application through this entire process.
What is unbiased about that?
Between the exhausting back and forth of the appeals, the strategic connections assigned to our case, bills racked up over, $80,000, and neighbors running us off the road in retaliation to no longer being allowed to freeload, this house just doesn’t feel like home anymore.
So… we made the tough and heart-breaking decision to sell the business. In order to do that, I have to show 2 years’ worth of financials to prove what this business can generate. But that also meant I had to ask my parents to leave what they considered their retirement home. We haven’t spoken since November.
The moment we received the denial email from the hearings official, we were having dinner with some friends. Hidden under the jokes and small talk, my thoughts started brewing.
By the time I got home, I grew angrier. After a long and sleepless night, I was angrier than I’d been throughout the entire process. I was livid. After The Guy told me what the neighbor had said – sounds like your lawyers took you for a ride – I grew increasingly more indignant.
I started drafting letters in my head that I might send to each and every neighbor that had wronged me by sending in negative letters. I imagined thanking J for starting this whole mess over his inability to simply INTRODUCE OUR DOGS. I wanted to throw dog shit all over his walkway. I fantasized about telling everyone in town who would listen what he and his wife had done. Maybe I should turn his illegal structure in to the county. After all, turnabout is fair play – an eye for an eye – tit for tat fucker.
For days I imagined what I might say to the person who parks his boat on our property without so much as a thank you. You have no legal rights here. Go hire a lawyer and spend tens of thousands of dollars to fight me over it.
Or the person that stops by our marina and lets his dog swim in the lake. Go swim somewhere else asshole. I’m still waiting for your apology.
Or the neighbors that launched during salmon season without ever asking. Get off my property.
Or the one that we allowed to park and whom we cared for his kayak all winter, taking care not to let it float away. Maybe I would just set it on fire. Oops, I have no idea what happened.
Or the one that threatened to fight us at the state level of appeals. I’m glad you didn’t get one of Bean’s puppies you rat bastard.
I didn’t want to be the bigger person anymore. I was fed up and I wanted to be petty. I wanted vindication. YOU get a middle finger, and YOU get a middle finger. I’ll hand out middle fingers like a Chinese Oprah.
But as all things tend to do over time, I let my anger settle. After all, pettiness is just the art of making a mountain out of a mole hill and then dying on it.
In the end, we are going to open another chapter to this life. This decision is the hardest on The Guy, especially because he can never bare to get rid of anything he cares about, and who has put his literal blood, sweat, and tears into every part of these buildings.
I remind him that this special place was here long before us and we have restored it so people can enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed long after us.
And no one can take that away. Now all I have to do, is also believe it.
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