The next story is about a different kind of self-own, and it is titled, more or less, neighbor owns himself by calling code enforcement. We bought our house about four years ago. During the showing, the inspections, the appraisal, and the approval by the city, no one said anything about the neighbor’s fence. It spanned from the front right corner of his house, if you were looking at them from the street, across his driveway with a gate, to the front left corner of my house. It effectively blocked me from accessing a thirty-foot by four-foot strip of my own property. It was all grass that he mowed. Later that year, in November, I noticed a tiny bit of water seeping into the basement on that side of the house. We had just gotten through our third historic once-in-a-hundred-years rainfall of the year. A quick look at that side of the house showed a slight slope toward my house. I planned to hire someone in the spring to slope it away and install a French drain, so I did not flood his driveway. Like a good neighbor.
The next spring I hired the crew. They went over and started working. The neighbor, a sixty-ish man who looks eighty according to my wife, came out hot, screaming at these guys, wondering what they were doing on his property. I had never had an issue with a siding repairman who accessed that same strip, or the cable guy, or a plumber, all of whom had been there many times. He gave them a hard time for a few minutes. They blew it off and thought he had been day-drinking. They sloped it, tilled it, mulched it, and left a nice flower bed for future use. The next year, last year, I planted some roses in the bed and hired a company to do a whole-yard clean-out. They got to that side to pull weeds and lay fresh mulch, and the old man came screaming out of his house, telling them to get off his property. He even took a half-hearted swing at one of the guys, calling them all dirty Mexicans. These guys were white, so that made no sense either. I came out, and he started yelling at me, saying they were messing up his yard, and he wanted me to pay to restore it. I said no. He called me a name, over and over. I told him to ignore that strip. I spoke with my wife, and we both agreed that if he wanted to be a jerk, we would just be petty and let it overgrow so he could look at it. You cannot really see it from the street, so I did not really care.
The weeds were about four feet tall by the end of the summer. This spring was wet, so the weeds were knee-high by the start of May. I was outside mowing when he came out. He got in my face and asked when I was going to clean this crap up. I said, when I have assurances that you will not harass me or the workers, then I will clean it up. This upset him. He started calling me names again. He even threw in the word lazy. I told him to call the city and ignored him. He turned his attention to the other neighbors and started raising holy hell with them. My house, while older, is well maintained and carefully landscaped. His house has aluminum siding from the eighties. He does not edge any of the walks or driveways, and he has old aluminum awnings that are filthy. His back patio has tall weeds between the pavers, and I say nothing about it. It is not mine, and honestly he is keeping values down enough that the tax man did not raise my rates, so I just do not care.