Duane died and that renewed our neighbors wrath, making sure everyone in the city knew our lot was a nonconforming lot and we couldn’t do anything with it. So off we went into survey fees, architect fees, attorney’s fees, a 1911 plat, discovery of an illegal subdivision, current subdivision plans involving giving up five feet of the Roosevelt lot to the trailer lot with the attendant fees, the furnace in the unoccupied trailer mysteriously going out, pipes freezing, later bursting, a late night phone call that water had been running in the trailer for a week, gas and water shutoff, a contact to us from the city about “a public safety issue” reported by the crazy neighbor, a city inspector visit, the trailer no longer habitable, ….. and right in the middle of it all, someone suddenly discovers the vacation of the old alley that used to run between the trailer lot and the predecessor to the crazy neighbor. I remember the old alley, but I’d forgotten about it. It looked more like a dirt driveway that the predecessor to the crazy neighbor used. There is reference in the city records about the westerly five feet of the ten foot wide alley being assigned to the neighbor’s plat, but no record of the easterly plat being recognized as our property. After all these years, it turns out that the complaining neighbor misunderstood his own property line and built his own house dead on it, and put his fence five feet into our property. What a delicious irony, that by making us jump through so many hoops, it leads to the discovery of his fuck-up.
Well, anyway, no harm no foul I say. He can remove his fence from our property, we’ll subdivide from the legitimate property line and he can deal with the city about having a house that sits right on his own property line with zero setback. Who knows if that’s a big deal or not. Maybe all he has to do is get a variance approved by all his neighbors……
