When is your neighbor's business your business?
Friday, September 15, 2006
Let me first say that Steve Orr and his neighborhood inspection troopers crossed a line of public decency and manners when they trespassed on private property and took pictures of people's junky backyards and porches filled with debris.
It's one thing to point out blighted properties and take photos from the street, but it's a completely different animal to play private detective and then post those pictures online.
Orr himself admitted he wasn't sure if it was legal to go on to people's property, take pictures and then post them online but he did it anyway. That is wrong and irresponsible.
One person wrote on Orr's e-mail list that his 12-year-old daughter was "freaked out" when she saw Orr taking pictures and that the reasons for his house's disrepair was a very serious illness.
If some property owners ever wanted to file a criminal trespass complaint against Orr they wouldn't have to look hard for evidence - it's posted online.
Some in Framingham admire Orr for what he's doing to bring attention to properties that need fixing up. Blighted properties no doubt have an effect on the neighborhood but at what point does a home with overgrown weeds, peeling paint and piles of wood become a point of municipal intervention vs. simply a matter of someone who isn't the greatest landscaper and has bad taste?
For example, one of the homes highlighted by Orr as a beacon of light on an otherwise rundown street would drive me nutty. Its front lawn had what I like to call "yard sale regurgitation syndrome" - it looked like someone set up every manner of lawn ornament and artsy junk imaginable.
But then again, I'm no fan of lawn ornaments in general.
What if your neighbor paints his or her house bright pink? Or what if they hang a flag espousing unpopular political views - say a national emblem for the old Communist Soviet Union or better yet, a flag for the KKK?
Surely those factors could influence beloved property values but do they rise to the level of municipal intervention? As long as you don't live in some hoity-toity homeowner's association neighborhood, you can and should be able to do pretty much whatever you want.
The two obvious exceptions would be health and building codes. If dense weeds and overgrown brush are shown to harbor rodents invading other people's homes, OK, order them cut down. If a building's structural integrity is compromised to the point where it is unsafe to inhabit, by all means condemn the house.
The idea to publicly shame homeowners into fixing their properties is a shallow attempt to address the real problem - municipal shortcomings. It was refreshing to hear selectmen and town officials discuss the idea of actually increasing manpower in the building department to better and more quickly address areas of blight, nuisance and neglect.
Tuesday night, Inspectional Services Director Joe Mikielian told the board his office collected $16,700 in fines during fiscal year 2006 from residents who violated the nuisance bylaw. He added that there were 600 documented nuisance bylaw violations during the same time period.
The photos posted by Orr prove that more money from neglectful homeowners can be had, but we already knew that. Some of the photos also show what is likely not a nuisance bylaw violation nor evidence of overcrowding. It becomes an expose of what Orr and some of his buddies deem "ugly."
Orr should be commended for his efforts to bring more attention to this townwide problem and if the exposure pressures town officials, and more importantly Town Meeting, to take the proper budgetary steps to address the problem and fix it, great.
But Orr should acknowledge he was a little overzealous in his quest to shine a light on everything in both the front yards and back yards, and sometimes through windows, of neighborhoods.
As I said last week, all this posturing and picture-taking and speechifying is fine and dandy. But real results will only come when Town Meeting and town officials have enough stomach and backbone to direct more money and personnel to the building and health departments. This is a problem that does not need a committee, a panel or a board. It needs a task force.
(Rob Haneisen is the central regional editor of the MetroWest Daily News. He can be reached at or .)
|
|
%%REPORTER%%
|