Posted on 01/18/2013 9:24:56 AM PST by lowbridge
A new apartment building is being constructed just 12 inches from a family’s home in The Bronx, and the house’s owners are fuming mad.
“This is what I get to see. Nice,” scoffed Fernando Justiniano, 49, yesterday as he drew open his dining-room curtains to reveal the “monstrosity’’ of gray cinder blocks a foot from his home at 3525 Bruckner Blvd.
Justiniano and his wife, Patty, 44, said that when they bought the Pelham Bay home for $200,000 about 13 years ago, it overlooked another residence with a pristine yard.
“It’s preposterous. The fact that [the developer] can build that close — I don’t understand,” Patty said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I’ve never had to deal with such things fortunately.
I live in a vast metropolis of 150 people now.
Exactly. A low-information buyer.
Good point!
Who was their contractor...?
“Green acres is the place for me.
Farm livin’ is the life for me.
Land spreadin’ out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.”
I own 20 acres with my home in the middle. I wish I had a whole lot more land.....
This was back in the 60’s and the family had just moved from SC up to MI.
I don’t think they thought much of it, seems where they moved from there was no such thing as building codes out in the country. The house was approved, they had a building permit but I don’t think they ever submitted a site-plan.
Back then perhaps that wasn’t needed like today.
And yet the City is running out of places to gentrify. Parts of the Bronx are really starting to move up.
Priest: Don’t be afraid, my son. No one is more powerful than God.
Calogero ‘C’ Anello: I don’t know about that, father. Your guy may be bigger than my guy up there, but my guy is bigger than your guy down here.
Priest: Ya got a point.
Site plan is part of the package you give the building inspector. I added a garage to my property, and we were well within the set back (which was like 25 feet), maybe a good ten feet to spare. It was a 24’ x 24’ garage, attached via a 6’ foot breezeway, which would tell you it extended 30’ from the edge of the house. The building inspector wanted a survey, which would have cost over a $100 bucks, but I whined enough that he waived it. (Clearly it was compliant.)
More accurately, the new building's owners won back some of their property rights by being landlord to "the guys on welfare." I'm in favor of zoning (as opposed to its complete absence) but to depict it as a defense of property rights is Orwellian.
They were subcontracting themselves, they didn’t use a builder.
A “pristine yard” in the Bronx? Obvious exaggeration does little for drumming up sympathies.
You don’t understand, these people did about everything the codes restrict you could imagine, and it was up to us to complain to get them to stop, the county didn’t do a darn thing on their own.
There is a creek running through both of our properties, that guy one day just put down big pipes and buried it the entire width of his from line to line. Illegal as hell, we complained to the state and everyone else and what it all boiled down to was nobody did anything, we would have had to sue him personally and screwing with a waterway in Michigan was suppose to be some mega no-no.
This is why my driveway is 8/10 of a mile long, and the only neighbor I can see is my mom on the other side of the lake. Some people can luck out and get the best neighbors in the world, or they can crap-out like we did and get gun shy because of it.
They live on Bruckner Blvd; it’s not like they’re losing beautiful views. I abhor the government spending other peoples money to build housing but, according to the story, the builder is in compliance. It sucks
No I understood, just saying that hereabouts nowadays it’s quite different, you cannot build anything larger than a 10’ x 10’ shed without a permit.
I know what a *huge* difference good neighbors can make. When I was selling my house with the attached garage, the abutter on my left just about never mowed his lawn, his paint was peeling and his house was generally in disrepair. I mowed the area the lawn near my house (we had a large hedge separating us) to make my place saleable. After he moved/was forclosed, the new owners tore down his house to the bare frame and rebuilt it very nicely.
For the most part, I’ve had wonderful neighbors, though.
They don’t have zoning laws?
As sewers came in smaller lots were tolerable.
That's within living memory.
Rational analysis plays no part in these “government should tell people what to do with their property” threads.
It must mean that there is only a six inch setback requirement? What kind of idiotic building code is that?
Again, the rules I cited tell us that when it's R7 and its adacent to R4, the R5 rules prevail at the margins ~ but like I said, the new building's "bulk" clearly violates the rule regarding adacency of heights ~ BTW, the way you do that is you go to the middle of the street and look up at something like 30 degrees. With a 20 ft setback any building that interferes with your line of sight and fronts on the same street is usually in violation of the law EVEN IF it otherwise conforms to the standards set for its own lot.
New York's law is old and crafted to minimize damage to existing property rights ~ particularly access to sunlight. They have some model ordinances people all over the world have adopted. I strongly suspect hoodwinking and skulduggery in this deal.
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