Whose Home Is It, Anyway?

Brian Doherty | February 2, 2005

Embroiled as I am in a conflict with city code enforcers over whether having every wall of an apartment filled floor to ceiling with shelves with records and books constitutes an illegal act, I experienced a twinge of fellow-feeling toward this Monrovia, Calif. pack rat who will have state-enforced "professional organizers" force (uh, help, I guess they are calling it) her to throw away lots of stuff--at her expense.

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|2.2.05 @ 7:58PM|#

If you think that's something, check out this.

http://www.viceland.com/issues/v11n11/htdocs/pile.php

Franklin Harris|2.2.05 @ 7:59PM|#

"Our purpose is to sort through her things and still respect her dignity as much as possible,' David Factor, one of the professional organizers, said.

Not to be rude, but the only way this jerk could respect this poor woman's dignity is if he killed himself. Now. Japanese style. With a note about how sorry he is for having been a Nazi stooge.

I need a bumper sticker: "You'll only get my comic books and DVDs from my cold dead hands!"

That's a bit long for a bumper sticker, but I just couldn't bring myself to throw any words away.

Franklin Harris|2.2.05 @ 8:00PM|#

http://www.viceland.com/issues/v11n11/htdocs/pile.php

How did they get pictures of my house???

Tim Cavanaugh|2.2.05 @ 8:09PM|#

That's fukt. At least with Brian they have the excuse that he's a renter, so depending on what the landlord thinks, he'd have limited rights to trash the place. This woman owns her house. If they're concerned about the fire hazards, the fire department should refuse to help her next time she has a fire.

It's a pretty messy house though, you've got to admit.

|2.2.05 @ 8:54PM|#

"...but the only way this jerk could respect this poor woman's dignity is if he killed himself. Now. Japanese style. With a note about how sorry he is for having been a Nazi stooge."

Fuckin'-A, Franklin. This might even be worse than that story a few days ago on students views about freedom of speech.

|2.2.05 @ 8:55PM|#

I've limited sympathy for her. Certainly wouldn't want a neigbhor like that.

|2.2.05 @ 9:21PM|#

SM-
So long as her yard is clean, why should you care what the inside of her house looks like? It's not as if you have to go and visit her, if you don't want to.

The professional organizers here and those who hired them are truly evil people.

|2.2.05 @ 10:16PM|#

I ain't visiting her & don't care what the inside of her house looks like. But the article claimed that her yard was cluttered too.
Let's see -

"And the stacks don't stop in the house. The garage, carport and parts of the yard are also stuffed with rusting lawn mowers and yellowing newspapers, plus the occasional new appliance still in its box."

It doesn't say anything else about the outside of her house but if the inside is any indication then one wonders. Point is, I'd be really pissed if the value of my house dropped by $100, 000 /- for no other reason than that the slob next door doesn't have the common courtesy to clean up. Limited sympathy it remains.
But I certainly agree that the "professional organizer" thing is fantastically heavy-handed. Maybe the city could have finessed this by putting her on some clean-up tv show :-)

|2.3.05 @ 12:00AM|#

I know a fellow in East-Central Michigan who had the same thing happen to him.

In all those college admissions essays where they asked me to espouse the glories of social justice, I wrote about property rights, and interviewed this guy in the process.

His house stands alone, surrounded by corn fields. It's on a pretty heavily used road, but there's not another house for half a mile or a business for two. He'd been collecting machines to work on in his spare time, and his yard was amazingly cluttered. I doubt he ever even had to mow the lawn. Even had a hovercraft, he did. It was lime green.

The point of the matter is that eventually the city came up with a sleazy plan to legally define his yard as a landfill, then assert that a landfill was not allowed in a residential zone. Nevermind the corn feilds surrounding his tiny residential zone -- hell, I didn't even know that area was zoned.

They came in with a bunch of clean-up guys and took everything off his yard. They didnt have a warrant, but they claimed they didnt need one because the police weren't the ones stealing his things. They auctioned off what they could, used the money to pay the clean-up guys, and gave the poor fellow about a hundred bucks.

Mark Draughn|2.3.05 @ 2:11AM|#

Fight them Brian. Your place, your rules. Fight them every step of the way. Making you remove stuff from your apartment is only one footprint on one beachhead in one battle of the war, but be warned that the fate of our way of life hangs in the balance.

First they propagandize against us with those home-organization shows urging us to "throw away stuff you aren't using" as if the capacity, the potential, the possibility of preserving our future options had no meaning. Throwing away your stuff if you don't have enough room is loser thinking. A real man, a real human being, doesn't so easily discard the dream of a larger home.

If they force you to remove even one coverless paperback copy of a 25-year old Taylor Caldwell novel, that's one more step in the forced march towards soul-destroying tyranny. Never give up, never surrender.

|2.3.05 @ 7:33AM|#

But the article claimed that her yard was cluttered too.

So build a fence. Plant a hedge. Geez.

|2.3.05 @ 9:09AM|#

I'm surprised no one made a Queer Eye for Straight Guy joke. Maybe the city should hire those poofs to raid the place and make it fabulous.

Seriously, this woman is clearly suffering from a mental illness. Why isn't her family helping her?

Regardless, all the city needs to do is make her sign a statement acknowledging the danger she is presenting herself. It would be idiotic if her family successfully sues after the nutjob roasts herself, especially due to their inaction I described above.

sage|2.3.05 @ 10:29AM|#

Holy crap. That is a lot of crap. Fred Sanford would be all, "Hey, you gonna eat that?"

|2.3.05 @ 10:39AM|#

Another example of a no-win situation. Even a signed waiver won't prevent a lawsuit and the possibility of massive bad PR. So the city puts on jackboots to protect itself and in the process liberty takes one of those boots to the groin.

As usual, rights and responsibilities clash. Situations like this where there is someone who can't or won't stay within the common boundaries really demonstrate that the rules only work to a small extent.

We all give up something for the arguable security and comfort and convenience of living together. That something is often no more than a theoretical absolute freedom. In the cases, however, where a given person strains a given boundary, figuring out what the right answer is, is not easy.

I can't convince myself that the city officials, or the organizers, or the neighbors, or the family, or the messy person herself, are particularly more evil than anyone else. Any one of them *may* be, but even without them being especially evil, their interests and perspectives are at odds. When that happens, I think it's pretty rare that one of multiple sides is 100% in the right or in the wrong. In order to achieve maximum fairness the stakeholders would all probably have to invest more time, energy, and flexibility than any of them want. So it comes down to power, victory in battle, counterattack, conviction-appeal-overturn-supreme court, etc. Where's my pint flask?

|2.3.05 @ 10:44AM|#

"If they're concerned about the fire hazards, the fire department should refuse to help her next time she has a fire."

Yeah right, Cavanaugh. I can see the Daily Brickbat now, "Woman in Michigan dies because state-monopoly firemen refused to enter her house, claiming it was messy."

sage|2.3.05 @ 11:06AM|#

Actually, it might say something more like "Woman dies in pile of her own filth because she was not responsible enough to keep her place clean such that she could escape in the event of a fire."

|2.3.05 @ 12:50PM|#

Yep, sage, when the government selectively denies its services to people based on their lifestyle choices, the Daily Brickbat is always there to back up the government's right to discriminate.

|2.3.05 @ 1:02PM|#

And of course joe, since she wouldn't be using the fire department then the govermment won't bill her for their services. Right?

|2.3.05 @ 1:03PM|#

I think joe makes a good point, even if I'm not 100% persuaded.

|2.3.05 @ 2:04PM|#

That link that was posted mentioned Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter - I was just having a discussion about that movie with someone two nights ago. Every once in a while it is shown at the local cinema house, and I always miss it. It sounds really awesome. I really wanna see it.

That woman has the right to keep the inside of her house as filthy as she wants it - and the fire department should still make all reasonable attempts to save her and put the fire out, in the event of a fire. That's why she (and everyone else) pays the fire department with our taxes. In the event of a fire, they provide their services. Period. Tax money shows no discrimination (except in favoring the enormously rich), so tax services shouldn't, either. So what if she's mentally ill? It's her life, and it's her house.

I'm not going to incriminate someone for being a neat freak, just because I'm a slob. It's called personal property, dickheads.

As an aside, I also thought those weird plastic-character scenarios in the link were pretty funny. Not my choice of decoration, though...

|2.3.05 @ 2:17PM|#

This doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I'm listening to 'the hanging judge roy bean' on the tv in the background, and they're doing some sort of montage sequence under a song sung by Andy Williams. And it's terrible.

What were they thinking, my god.

sage|2.3.05 @ 2:24PM|#

"Yep, sage, when the government selectively denies its services to people based on their lifestyle choices, the Daily Brickbat is always there to back up the government's right to discriminate."

First of all joe, I never mentioned the government discriminating. Perhaps Mr. Cavanaugh should have been more clear, but when he mentioned the fire dept. refusing to help, I pictured them letting her house burn to the ground-BUT NOT WITH HER IN IT.

|2.3.05 @ 3:28PM|#

sage,

Wasn't joe, just a few threads back, complaining of Ayn Rand's "gas chamber" policy towards "looters"? And now look at him, he's defending leaving a mentally ill woman, who I'm sure probably pays taxes, to burn in a hypothetical fire....hmm....why does that attitude seem hypocritical to me?

And to refute Joe: I've seen plenty of news stories and media mocking private citizens who get themselves down shit creek without a paddle...ever watch Cops? The cops are almost always portrayed as heroes, while the citizens expose themselves for the freaks they are...They don't call it entertainment for nothing...

|2.3.05 @ 4:25PM|#

Correction: Ayn Rand's alleged gas chamber policy.

|2.3.05 @ 4:29PM|#

This is very much like the case of the Collyer brothers in 1947. For a fascinating account try the book "Ghosty Men".

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/158234311X/reasonmagazineA/

Apparently NYC police still refer to cases like these as "Collyer calls".

Compulsive hording is more common than one might otherwise think. While I myself hesitate to call it mental 'illness' it's certainly a distinct mental condition that many share to some degree.

My opinion leans to letting the woman do whatever makes her happy, but a case could be made that she is endangering herself. Of course, the simplest solution would be to seize her home under eminent domain. The state could obviously make better use of her property than she can. /sarcasm

|2.3.05 @ 4:33PM|#

Actually, she's not mentally ill. She's just a sinner. We should repossess the home in the name of Gd and all that is profitable.

|2.3.05 @ 5:07PM|#

Damn, smacky, are you barking up the wrong tree! FYI, nothing I wrote comes close to "defending leaving a mentally ill woman, who I'm sure probably pays taxes, to burn in a hypothetical fire?"

Oh, and COPS sucks. And that doesn't have anything to do with my post, either.

|2.3.05 @ 5:40PM|#

Yep, sage, when the government selectively denies its services to people based on their lifestyle choices, the Daily Brickbat is always there to back up the government's right to discriminate.

Damn, smacky, are you barking up the wrong tree! FYI, nothing I wrote comes close to "defending leaving a mentally ill woman, who I'm sure probably pays taxes, to burn in a hypothetical fire?"

joe -

If there are basic social services instituted through taxpayer money, and assuming all benefitters are or have been taxpayers, since when should the government get to decide to whom those pre-paid services are rendered? As 'just another lurker' pointed out, this sort of junk hoarding is more common than most people probably believe.
Of course you didn't flagrantly say that the government would be right to decide to leave that woman to perish, but the tone of your post suggested that the Daily Brickbat would be warranted to (and therefore should , indeed) defend such a decision on the part of the local government. Firemen are trained to deal with that kind of situation, not puss out in dangerous or precarious situations. Granted, she is making it more difficult for them, but the converse is that they are making it more difficult for her ability to choose her own, private lifestyle by "pre-emptively striking", as they say.

|2.3.05 @ 7:03PM|#

smacky

I think you misunderstood joe's original post.

|2.3.05 @ 8:36PM|#

So, if a person is calculated to owe no tax through taking advantage of social-engineering tax credits, does that mean that the state is no longer required to provide its services to them?

|2.3.05 @ 11:28PM|#

So, if a person is calculated to owe no tax through taking advantage of social-engineering tax credits, does that mean that the state is no longer required to provide its services to them?

&ltsarcasm> db, anybody who does all of the things that our Leaders find pleasing in Their eyes not only deserves a tax credit, that person also deserves a nice fat check from your pocket </sarcasm>