Gov’t Threatening to Go After Family for Child’s Tree House, Built on Their Own Property
For the next couple of months, the kids worked on and finally finished the tree house in May. The pictures the family shared with Mercury News were pretty epic, and the family was extremely proud of their endeavor.
Several months after they finished construction, the Sparks family received a letter in the mail from the local government. The letter, from the Santa Cruz Department of Planning and Community Development, said a neighbor had complained that the tree house was not up to code and, therefore, the family was subject to an untold number of fines.
“They dated it for Aug. 4 but we didn’t receive notice until three days ago … It’s hard because it’s always, ‘Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.’ It’s a slow process, and we were told that all costs incurred by the city relative to our case can be billed to us,” Kindred told the paper.
As the letter was so vague, Kindred has no idea what’s going to happen to them and, amazingly enough, she remains supportive of the process, but told Mercury News, she plans on fighting for the tree house.
For now, the fate of the Sparks kids’ tree house remains in limbo. Will they be forced to tear it down or pay hefty fines for building it out of code? Those questions remain unanswered but if history is any indicator, things could get far worse for this family.
For free-thinking freedom lovers, the thought of the city telling property owners that they can’t enhance their own property with a tree house is an absurdity. Even more ludicrous is the notion property owners ever really own their property. The minute a family stops paying government-imposed property taxes, the city takes their property and sells it to someone else, all of which raises the question, “do we really own property or does the government just let us think we do.”
https://www.activistpost.com/2021/09/govt-threatening-to-go-after-family-for-childs-tree-house-built-on-their-own-property.html