Hi, I am having trouble with ordinance issues in Springfield mass they are now telling me I can't even park it in my backyard and I pay close to $4000 in taxes here in the city and I have a nice clean well-kept yard here what should I do now? Does anyone have any ideas where I can store this RV it's a 30 foot Winnebago. They had agreed previously to let me park it there if I made my driveway wider which cost me a lot of money I did so now the neighbors complaining again so now they're asking me to remove it please help me if you can give me some idea what to do on this thank you ever so much!

Simple "they" agreed that if you made your driveway wider you could park it in the back yard. Then hold "them" to their agreement.

I had a similar problem in Carmel, Indiana. (Hamilton County). I moved to a cornfield in Madison County. I couldn't win, and my philosophy is, "I sleep where my camper parks." If I can't park it at home, I'm not living there. We moved.Unfortunately, it took some time to get relocated. Meanwhile, we had to do something with the camper. My in-laws lived about 60 miles from there, but they have a farm. We ended up taking the camper there. It sat for almost 9 months over a 20 degree below zero winter. Unfortunately, I could not just run up and tend to the camper ever night. The shower walls ended up cracking, the linoleum floor cracked, some of paneling on the walls cracked due to the extreme cold and no way to tend to it to keep it warmed during those extreme cold days.Finally, we moved anyway. We had 2 mortgages, 2 houses, and 2 sets of real-estate to maintain 25 miles apart from each other, working full time in Information Technology which demanded lots of overtime and strange night hours. It was a mess. But it was WORTH it 100%. You guessed it, we didn't do much camping that year.YOU have to make up your mind what's most important to you. Your RV lifestyle or the **** neighbors you have to live beside every day! Moving may be your best option. We found out we were very hateful toward our neighbors when all this went down. We could not have continued living there, even if the rules changed. The grapes were spoiled, never to be the same. The photo below was taken the day we brought the camper home from the in-laws to the new house (we moved in late February, the camper came home about a week after we moved the first load of furniture). It was one of the happiest day of my life! And have absolutely NO regrets about moving, the problems selling the old house, the expenses, the work, the aggravation, the stress, or the headaches. It was ALL worth it now! We live in peace now!

HARLYGL94 wrote:Hi, I am having trouble with ordinance issues in Springfield mass they are now telling me I can't even park it in my backyard and I pay close to $4000 in taxes here in the city and I have a nice clean well-kept yard here what should I do now? Does anyone have any ideas where I can store this RV it's a 30 foot Winnebago. They had agreed previously to let me park it there if I made my driveway wider which cost me a lot of money I did so now the neighbors complaining again so now they're asking me to remove it please help me if you can give me some idea what to do on this thank you ever so much!Is it the government giving you a hard time or some fracking homeowners association?If it's the government:Time to start writing your city council, county commissioner and state rep. Hire an attorney, he/she may be cheaper than buying a new house or paying for long term storage.I seem to recall reading in the Michigan Bill of Rights that no locality shall make a law that obstructs or interferes with my right as a citizen of the state... I'm sure Mass. has something similar. So you need a clever attorney to find wording in a state statue that allows you to park your camper on property you own, and threaten to sue the locality for trampling on your rights.If it's a HOA:You're screwed - should have read the fine print and master deed before you bought the property. You own your house and the ground around it, but some baron owns the neighborhood and holds the master deed and you live by their law.

I thought if you had a pre-existing condition, that is now outlawed by ordinance, you could get grandfathered in. We had a kennel for years before local ordinances were enacted that forbid it. We were able to get grandfather status. If we ever let our kennel license go, we could never get it back again, but as long as we keep it, we're good.I would hope you got your permission in writing, with the condition you widen your driveway. When the city water company went through each home was allowed to keep one outside spigot off their wells. We applied for exception - in a now residential area, we own the farm of what is left after they were done hacking it up to create the said residential area. We have livestock, kennel, etc. We got special exception to have 4 outside spigots off our wells due to the nature of our property. It's in writing and locked in a fire proof box.

Ordinance problems Springfield mass | Good Sam Community

hotbyte
Explorer
Nov 14, 2014
Sorry to hear that. I'm lucky in that I can keep our MH and boat in backyard. I'd have to seriously consider moving also if I could not.

No advice, but best of luck in getting it resolved.
fireflock
Explorer
Nov 14, 2014
Parking restrictions are common problems where I live, and they come from either the city or a HOA. In our case, we were very careful to buy a house in a neighborhood where RV parking was explicitly allowed in the restrictive covenants.

To answer your question - where can you park your RV if you can't park it at home:
(1) Do you have family or friends who own property without restrictions?
(2) Mini-storage places do a good business keeping RVs and Boats that are not allowed in neighborhoods.
(3) Can you, and do you want to, build a garage? Sometimes that keeps the ordinances away.
(4) Some people store their RV at a campground close to a place where they like to vacation.
(5) Craigslist in my area has a handful of farmers who are always offering cheap RV storage on their land.
(6) You might be able to find a warehouse type place that rents space to RV's. Heated / cooled / electricity / $$$$

Good Luck.
donn0128
Explorer II
Nov 14, 2014
MOVE! Its obvious they no longer want your money so quit giving it to them.
ScottG
Nomad
Nov 14, 2014
raindove wrote:
path1 wrote:
raindove wrote:
I thought if you had a pre-existing condition, that is now outlawed by ordinance, you could get grandfathered in.

I'm sure everyplace is different. When we were absorbed into a incorp city from the county and could not get a building permit to build a new house on back lot because the city we were put into has a 20 foot wide rule on drive ways. Ours is 17 feet wide. Many of us that were effected by this felt this was wrong and should be "grandfathered". Our "new" city said "no" even though the propaganda said that all pre-existing ordinances would not change.

Our rights are being eroded away, bit by bit. Seriously makes me wonder what kind of world we are leaving to our grandkids to live in.

I remember the screaming matches at the borough meetings - one guy did NOT want to see fences lined up down through town, so no one was to be able to put a fence over 3 ft high in a front yard. Really? A 3 ft fence won't keep many dogs contained. Maybe toy breeds. But my question was that maybe another guy likes fences -- how would the guy fighting it, like it if he was told he HAD to put a fence up.

We are talking about an 88 house borough - not a major metropolitan area. If you blink your eyes, you miss it completely when driving through.

It's all about the "me" mentality so rampant these days.

You'd think they'd be concerned about the boroughs getting out with those 3' fences. ;):B
HARLYGL94
Explorer
Nov 14, 2014
I think the place that you're referring to the pretext RVs and owners with property rights is the good Sam club I'll have to check again in my brochure
HARLYGL94
Explorer
Nov 14, 2014
donn0128 wrote:
MOVE! Its obvious they no longer want your money so quit giving it to them.

I wish it were that easy to move I have lived here in aged here I've been here 33 years and have a house full of stuff and I didn't have any plans on moving I put a two car garage on this place in a room in the back. Never saw this coming
mgirardo
Explorer
Nov 14, 2014
I would go see the County Clerk and ask to see the ordinance that you are supposedly violating. My sister-in-law and her husband live in a small town in Northern NJ. After they moved in, they parked their Motorhome in their driveway. Not long after they received a notice that a neighbor complained and that the Motorhome had to be removed. When they went to the County Clerk to fight the notice they found out that there was no ordinance forbidding them from parking their Motorhome at the house (other than it can't be in the street).

I don't know if you need a lawyer at this point or not, but definitely appeal the notice and asked to see the ordinance.

-Michael
Escargot
Explorer
Nov 15, 2014
They had agreed previously to let me park it there if I made my driveway wider which cost me a lot of money

If the entire ordeal doesn't end in your favor, don't forget to sue the HOA for reimbursement of the widened driveway costs plus interest.
tmoore2
Explorer
Nov 15, 2014
Last year we went through something similar with our city. They sent out a notice that an RV had to be parked behind the rear plane of the home and on an approved parking surface(concrete). My RV was parked behind the rear plane and on my drive so I was legal. My son-in-law has a brother who lived down the street from me. He could not get his behind the rear plane without removing a carport so he had a problem.

I decided to do some research on the city ordinances. There was no ordinance that said the RV had to be behind the rear plane of the home only had to be behind the FRONT plane. Took them about 6 months to rewrite the ordinance to say the RV had to be behind the rear plane.

Son-in-Law's brother decided to move instead of fighting it.
HARLYGL94
Explorer
Nov 15, 2014
So now the city says that they you can no longer have the RV in the yard at all not even in your backyard which I have a nice big backyard perfect for it and it's all fenced in.

They won't even grandfather it in because they've changed the law again, and on the papers that they gave me it says you can park it on the side yard or the backyard now they're telling me nowhere at all.